Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. This is a beautifully written, haunting and profoundly moving novel from Sebastian Barry, an eye opening unofficial history of Ireland, the political turbulence, its misogyny, the injustice, ignorance, and a damning indictment of the Catholic Church, its abuse of power and judgementalism. Synopsis Author Barrys multi-award-winning novel is a triumphant panorama of twentieth-century Ireland as told through the prism of a centenarian care home resident who has her own momentous story to tell. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. The Irish Times called The Secret Scripture a great book and Sebastian Barry. OLD GOD'S TIME (MARCH 2023), SEBASTIAN BARRY'S STUNNING NEW NOVEL, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW Winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008 Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year 2008 Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 A Sunday Times Top 100 Novel of the Twenty-First Century Featured on BBC2's 'Between the Covers' as a Booker Gem 2021 Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Sebastian Barry, 2008, Faber and Faber, 312 pages, ISBN 9780571215294.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry