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PROMENONS-NOUS... © www.irisheyes.fr
  
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE
by Sebastian Barry...
reviewed by Jean O'Sullivan
"The Secret Scripture", Sebastian Barry's most recent novel, tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, who has spent the best part of her 100 years in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and who faces an uncertain future as the authorities prepare to close it down. Her exchanges with the psychiatrist Dr Grene form the backbone of the story; what she doesn't tell him she confides to a private journal, "Roseanne's testimony of herself" - the Secret Scripture of the title.
 Rosanne McNulty's tragic, gripping life story contrasts with that of the recently bereaved Dr Grene, a slightly gloomy character who has his own Secret Scripture - Dr Grene's Commonplace Book. They are drawn together by loneliness and Grene's fascination with Roseanne, her experience of a century of Irish society and the unspeakable cruelty she has endured.
A master storyteller of untold stories, Sebastian Barry often places his characters on the wrong - or losing - side of history. He intertwines history with a capital "H" with family stories, scraps of personal experience and everyday comedies and tragedies. Written in dreamy, hypnotic prose, Barry's novels, like his plays, take their inspiration from his own family history, imagining the lives of distant great-uncles ("The Wherebouts of Eneas Mc Nulty") or great-aunts ("Annie Dunne"). The same names crop up throughout his oeuvre - the main character in one novel might make a brief appearance in another. The overall effect is like a tapestry. In "A Long Long Way", Barry uses his exceptional powers of empathy to tell the story of Willie Dunne, a young Dubliner in the British army during the First World War who defends king and country in the trenches in France while his compatriots battle with British troops on the streets of Dublin. Willie Dunne personifies the tragedy of those soldiers who were shunned as traitors on their return to Ireland in 1918, and whose sacrifices were never acknowledged in their lifetimes.
"The Secret Scripture", is a worthwhile read - Barry is incapable of writing badly - in spite of the disappointment of a contrived ending. Barry won the 2008 Costa Book Award for "The Secret Scripture", and if there was any justice in the world he would have won the Man Booker Prize as well - if not for "The Secret Scripture" (which was on the 2008 shortlist) then for his masterpiece "A Long, Long Way "which was shortlisted for both the 2005 Man Booker Prize and the Dublin International Impac Prize. even if such prizes, in the words of author Zadie Smith, are "only nominally" about literature.
2008 Costa Book Award
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