The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, 300 pages, 2008.
Roseanne Clear, a 100-year-old inmate of an Irish mental institution who was placed there during Ireland's civil war because she had a child out of wedlock, secretly writes her story. Because the institution is closing, the chief psychiatrist must also piece her story together to determine what will happen to her next. Publishers Weekly: "Written in captivating, lyrical prose, Barry's novel is both a sparkling literary puzzle and a stark cautionary tale of corrupted power." This novel won the Costa (Whitbread) Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
The Wikipedia article on Sebastian Barry and a bio from the British Council Literature Team
This 36-minute audio interview with the author (click "download audio") is a gem. Click "Show transcript" to see a transcript of the interview. Charming, witty and painfully revealing, it explains the origins of key characters in the novel. At the beginning of the interview, the author reads the passage in which Roseanne's father drops feathers and hammers from the tower (pages 18-22). Before listening to the interview, try reading that passage to yourself to see if you can guess how the author reads it; I didn't come anywhere close myself.
The author says the book's title came from this poem by Thomas Kettle, an Irish nationalist. He wrote it in the trenches of World War I, where he died.
In this short interview, the author says he won the Costa Prize despite the fact that the judges did not like the novel's ending. He also discusses the origins of some of its characters.
A long Wikipedia article on the tangled history of the Irish Civil War
Roseanne met John Lavelle on top of Knocknarea near Maeve's (also called Medb's) Cairn.
On page 101, Roseanne says her memories are like "those terrible dark pictures that hang in churches, God knows why, because you cannot see a thing in them." Dr. Grene said that was a beautiful description of tramatic memory.
The Wikipedia entry on commonplace books explains the type of notebook that Dr. Grene (pronounced "Green") used.
Much of the story takes place in Sligo and nearby Rosses Point, the location of the Metal Man Lighthouse. Roseanne, however, lives most of her life in an asylum in Roscommon.
The poet W. B. Yeats spent his summers at Rosses Point, and several reviewers think this novel contains oblique references to him. Art Wilson, in his review in the New York Times, notes that W. H. Auden's poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" contains this line: "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry." On the first page of the novel, Roseanne, who writes poetically, talks about the hurt she received from Sligo. Roseanne is endangered by her own beauty; in his poem Easter, 1916, Yeats writes about the "terrible beauty" that was created by the Irish Rebellion of 1916.
Several reviews of the novel