{moszoomthumb imgid=1101 itemid=74 style_m=2}‘The Secret Scripture’ by Sebastian Barry

Poet, playwright and novelist Sebastian Barry continues with the story of the Sligo-born McNultys in his latest novel, “The Secret Scripture.” Barry first introduced the family in his 1999 novel “The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty.” This latest novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and recently came out in paperback, tells the tale of Roseanne Clear with all the poignancy and lyricism we’ve come to expect from the best of Ireland’s writers.

Roseanne resides in the soon-to-be-demolished Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, where all patients are being evaluated to determine whether they need continued institutionalization or can return to society. Approaching her 100th year, Roseanne has been at the hospital longer than the staff or any other patient, and no one seems to remember why she is there. When the assigned psychiatrist Dr. Grene looks back through her records and finds several discrepancies, he sets out to discover her story through his evaluation.

Barry structures the novel between written texts and conversations: Roseanne’s personal memoirs (which she writes and hides beneath her floorboards), Dr. Grene’s written evaluations, and conversations between the two. As their relationship develops, Roseanne’s version of her road to commitment begins to unfold. It began one evening when Father Gaunt, a Catholic priest, is asked to issue last rights to a Protestant boy felled during the Irish Civil War. Roseanne’s Protestant father Joseph Clear is the cemetery caretaker and is asked against protocol to bury the man. 

When it’s later discovered that the grave contains guns and not the body of Willie Lavelle, Joseph is suspected of sympathizing with the Irish resistance. This leads to his brutal murder, which the 12-year-old Roseanne witnesses. Father Gaunt becomes a continued presence in her life, subsequently trying to force Roseanne into marrying the Protestant grave keeper who took her father’s position. When she refuses, Gaunt does not disappear and instead interferes in her later marriage to Tom McNulty—a union frowned upon by both McNulty’s parents and the priest himself. 

Eventually, it is Father Gaunt who writes the commitment statement for Roseanne, and Dr. Grene works to untangle the conflicting information between his documentation, Gaunt’s assertions and Roseanne’s own account of her commitment. In parallel, Grene’s immersion into Roseanne’s story becomes a means of avoiding his own grief over the loss of his wife and his complicity in the dismal state of the marriage. 

Most remarkable in the novel are the points at which Barry’s writing spirals outward from the story to comment on larger themes. Of personal narratives, he writes, “It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.”

Central to the notion of family, memory and history is the question in the novel of whether Roseanne actually gave birth to a child, as she states. Grene’s initial evaluation attributes Roseanne’s belief to madness, being unable to find documentation of her child’s existence. His evaluation seeks the truth about Roseanne, vacillating between belief in what she tells him and the available documentation. As a woman in early 20th century Ireland, Roseanne’s ability to tell her own story is always counter to the stories that are put out there by others, especially Father Gaunt. The narrative reinforces the fact that the stories we hear, and history itself, are always told by the ones that hold the power.

Sebastian Barry draws strong parallels between the recovery of Roseanne’s life story and the construction of history itself. As Dr. Grene writes in his evaluation, “What is wrong with her account if she sincerely believes it? Is not most history written in a sort of wayward sincerity?”

Ultimately, Grene’s evaluation of Roseanne is an attempt to rescue her from being entirely lost, and through this process, he ends up finding himself. Barry paints his picture of early 20th century Ireland with the brushstrokes of history, memory and loss.  The novel takes place during a transformative time for Ireland, between the World Wars, between Protestant and Catholic, and between men and women. By establishing “The Secret Scripture” within these shifting spaces, Barry’s writing asks readers to think about the differences between the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories others tell about us.