The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry
320pp, Faber & Faber
£7.99 paperback / £3.84 Amazon.co.uk

An English teacher once suggested to me that the definition of a good book is one where you want to know what happens to the characters after the story ends. While that is not exactly true of Sebastian Barry's novel "The Secret Scripture" - I was rather bemused that it had been a Booker nominee to be honest - the ...
...quite some time thinking about the characters and the setting of the story. The themes and histories the book visits are certainly not new territory to Irish writers of either fiction or memoir, but this book seems to bring a new voice on them, presenting things that have become less shocking from their familiarity in a way where they can again have the power to move and appal the reader. While not a great novel in my opinion, that ability to shine ... more

The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry
320pp, Faber & Faber
£7.99 paperback / £3.84 Amazon.co.uk

An English teacher once suggested to me that the definition of a good book is one where you want to know what happens to the characters after the story ends. While that is not exactly true of Sebastian Barry's novel "The Secret Scripture" - I was rather bemused that it had been a Booker nominee to be honest - the nature of the story certainly left a considerable impression on me after I finished reading it, and I did spend quite some time thinking about the characters and the setting of the story. The themes and histories the book visits are certainly not new territory to Irish writers of either fiction or memoir, but this book seems to bring a new voice on them, presenting things that have become less shocking from their familiarity in a way where they can again have the power to move and appal the reader. While not a great novel in my opinion, that ability to shine a light on complex and often unpalatable parts of history is perhaps reason enough to read this book.

There are two first person narratives in "The Secret Scripture", each trying in their way to make sense of both their own past and that of their country by writing a private testimonial. Via the tried-and-tested dramatic device of patient and doctor, we experience the gradually unfolding stories of Roseanne McNulty, a forgotten centenarian confined to Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, and Dr Grene, a psychiatrist in charge of the crumbling Victorian institution trying to find out if the many older inmates in his care should be released or moved on before it is demolished entirely. Dr Grene is the person who knows Roseanne better than anyone, and even he knows little about her, only making the time to try to get to know her better when he come to assess her for release or relocation - it quickly becomes apparent, however, that she has been in the institution for so long that no-one can remember why she was admitted in the first place. Roseanne is curiously taciturn about this point, although notes to herself that, "I am completely alone. There is no one in the world that knows me outside of this place, all my own people, the few farthings of them that once were, my little wren of a mother ... they are all gone now... I am only a thing left over, a remnant woman...". We are therefore presented with two secret scriptures, although it is Roseanne's that is by far the more interesting, starting from her childhood as the only child of Presbyterian parents living in Sligo, a childhood that is as idyllic to her as it is strange to us, and gradually building up towards the present. She fondly remembers her father, a man who is largely respected by the local community - sufficiently so to hold the important post of keeper of the town cemetery - even as his religion largely puts him at arm's length from the rest of the town. But fate will not let their contentment be. When one evening, as Roseanne is visiting her father after school, sees a group of irregular (anti Anglo-Irish Treaty) soldiers break into the graveyard in an attempt to secretly bury their dead comrade, the consequences play out for the rest of all their lives. Dr Grene's journal, on the other hand, shows us a different sort of turbulence as he struggles to make sense of what has happened in his marriage and how the demolition of the hospital will take his life's work away from him.

The story alternates between the two perspectives of Roseanne and Dr Grene, an old-fashioned technique that mixes the present with the past, and gives us two perspectives on both. At first this seems a stilted and artificial approach that I found hard to take in; it is only around a third of the way into the novel that I felt it really started to work well and build up some momentum that could truly absorb and interest the reader. From there on in, it just got better and better for me as the narrative became increasingly compelling and I grew addicted to the story, even as I could see it drawing horribly towards the inevitable conclusion. That said, I found Dr Grene's voice to be a major weak spot in the novel as a whole. Even as I could see his role and importance in the finale coming a mile off, I felt that in all but the last couple of chapters a lot of his reflections and thoughts are a hindrance to the story, which is ultimately about Roseanne, rather than something that progresses it. To counter this, Barry gives Dr Grene a dramatic revelation of his own, but it is too late, too neat, too obvious a choice - indeed one I saw a long way off and hoped the author would avoid as being too preposterous for something that should pass as literary fiction - but I don't think it takes too much away from the book overall, however much I inwardly winced at the time.

The plot may strain in places, but the prose remains good quality. Roseanne writes in language that is both poetic and colloquial as she tried to untangle a century of memories, often noting asides and self-corrections as she attempts to make sense of all she has seen, done and said in her long life. Roseanne's patchwork of memories becomes "history", according to her own definition a "fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth". But it also becomes the eponymous "scripture": a sacred text of her forgotten life, of a lost corner of history. Indeed, there is something almost spiritual in Roseanne's brave reverence for life, in her willingness to find good in the midst of cruelty, prejudice and ignorance. This being an Irish novel of remembering, these qualities exist in an awful abundance - more often than not in the fearsome form of Father Gaunt, a man so appropriately named he could be straight out of a Dickens novel.

Barry ultimately tells us a story of Irish strife, the fallibility of history, and how truth is about perspective rather than being an absolute. These last two points in particular I found fascinating, as I read and compared very different accounts of key events and tried to decide for myself what I thought had happened and why these differences persisted through time. The Irish civil war creeps over the characters like an evil fog, but Barry remains completely neutral in his account, being more interested in the effects of events on ordinary people's lives, and how unrighted wrongs live on and poison future generations than on which side was in the right at the time things first happened. While someone with a good knowledge of Ireland and her history will doubtless be able to appreciate the story more, this shouldn't put off the interested reader with limited background knowledge. "The Secret Scripture" features some good characters and beautiful writing, and while it is arguably a tad more complex that need be and there are touches of melodrama in places, these points aren't enough to detract from this novel overall. It may not be the great book it sets out to be, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good book, all things considered.

Recommended.

 

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