Book Review
Book by Sebastian Barry (published by Faber and Faber Limited)
Review by Marie Hull Brown, Project Manager - Older People
Introduction
This book review examines a beautiful piece of fictional writing, which is based on the author's contact with people who have received mental health services in Ireland since the early part of the 20th century. It paints a picture of the relationship between the residents and the psychiatrist and reveals the resilience of the older woman whose story is ‘told' in her own words. This resilience is one that Marie sees in her own contacts with older people who have shared their stories with her during the course of her work for the Mental Health Foundation.
About the author
Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955 and now lives in County Wicklow, Ireland. Awards and prizes for his novels, plays and poetry range from the 1988 BBC/Stewart Parker Award for his play, Boss Grady's Boys, to the 2008 Costa Book of the Year Award for The Secret Scripture. This novel was also short listed for the Man Booker Award.
About the book
The Secret Scripture will be read by those whose interest is in the history of Ireland and those who enjoy lyrical prose. For those who have some understanding of the lives and emotions of the people portrayed in the book it is something to return to from time to time to absorb the atmosphere of a country at war with itself and wonder at the human spirit that survived the horror and bigotry of the era.
The central figure in The Secret Scripture is Roseanne McNulty, who tells her story under the title, ‘Roseanne's Testimony of Herself', which she writes in secret and hides beneath the floorboards of her room in Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. It is here that she has spent the largest part of her adult life and describes herself as "an old, old woman now, I may be as much as a hundred, though I do not know, and no one knows."
Roseanne writes about her life in Sligo, Ireland. As a young Irish woman, her beauty and innocence combine to bring the young men flocking to her door, but also bring the condemnation of Father Gaunt, who adheres to the rigid codes of the Catholic religion in Ireland.
It is he who eventually ensures that her ‘sins' bring about the dissolution of her marriage and - following the birth of her illegitimate baby - that she is eventually consigned to the asylum where she will spend the rest of her life.
Now she is known to no-one outside the hospital, where she writes of herself as "a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse and a canvas jacket.... like a songless robin - no, like a mouse that died under the hearthstone where it was warm and lies now like a mummy in the pyramids."
The other narrative voice is that of Dr Grene, the hospital's senior psychiatrist. He writes his own account of the need to break the news to the patients that their ‘home' is beyond repair and that they will soon be moved to another building for their own safety. He is resisting the thought of telling "those fifty ancient women in the central block, so old that age has become something eternal, continuous, so bedridden and encrusted with sores that to move them would be a sort of violation."
There are men in another part of the hospital who must also be told of their imminent move. "Those poor old boys in black suits made by the hospital tailor long ago, who are not so much mad as homeless and ancient, and who live along the rooms of the oldest west wing, like soldiers of some forgotten Peninsular or Indian War, will not know themselves outside this lost ground of Roscommon." Dr Grene must also assess which patients can return to the community and in what category he must put each patient.
As Dr Grene tries to bring himself to break the news to the patients, he spends more time in Roseanne's room, sometimes with hardly a word passing between them, though each is concerned for the other's wellbeing.
His wife dies and Roseanne sees the grief on his face and the dark suit he is wearing after attending her funeral. On that afternoon he stays in her room for an hour as they try to make sense of the inadequate details of her long stay in the hospital and her age and earlier background.
His questions distress her and he asks, "What is the matter, Roseanne? Have I upset you? I am so sorry." Her response is "Perhaps that is your job, Dr Grene?" Their subsequent conversation clears the .way for a closer relationship and Roseanne records that day. "He raised his right hand at the door and actually waved, like I was a passenger on a ship."
Another hand was raised that afternoon, when John Kane, the man who cleaned her room, found a spoon under the bed and slapped her face lightly before he left. He had visited her room earlier but forgotten to mop the floor, as he told her about the snowdrops blooming in the top garden, where patients were not allowed to go.
Her description of his appearance with his flies left open "as is mostly the case" displays no criticism but draws on her observation of the countryside, which she knew as a young woman. She writes, "Some day a small animal will notice his open flies and go in and live there, like a hedgehog in the inviting damp hollow of an ash tree."
