The Monastery Book

"For history as far as I can see is not the arrangement of what happens, in sequence and in truth, but a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth."

The Secret Scripture is a sublime work of fiction about memory and its effect on history and truth. It's about love and loss, grief, religion and Ireland. It nearly broke my heart, but left me with a glimpse of joy and hope. It's a slow unraveling of the mystery surrounding the reason why Roseanne McNulty has been institutionalized at the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital for the past sixty years of her nearly one hundred years of life. Her story is gradually revealed through her own narrative as recorded in a hidden journal as well as through inquiries made by Dr. Grene, the psychiatrist charged with her care. Roscommon is slated to shut down and Dr. Grene must determine which patients, if any, were wrongfully committed for reasons other than mental instability. The point of view alternates between Roseanne's voice and that of Dr. Grene. What Roseanne tells us and what Dr. Grene uncovers from old documents are two different versions of "the truth". Dr. Grene must determine which to believe and how these stories ultimately matter in his own decision regarding Roseanne's fate in her old age. "The one thing that is fatal in the reading of impromptu history is a wrongful desire for accuracy. There is no such thing."

Roseanne's story is a tragic one and my heart ached for this gentle soul left abandoned due to the ignorance and prejudices of other human beings. A Protestant in a country ravaged by civil war, Roseanne is a victim of the power of the Irish Catholic Church in the early 1900s. Father Gaunt is a symbol of the perversion of the influences of the church at that time over the lives and the moral judgments of those in its path. "Morality has its own civil wars, with its own victims in their own time and place."

The story is told slowly and is one to be read with quiet contemplation, allowing Sebastian Barry's extraordinary prose to wash over and captivate you. I closed the book with a feeling of absolute contentment despite the grim journey. I will no doubt read more of this author's work and am in fact anxious to do so. I highly recommend this five-star book.

"There are things that move at a human pace before our eyes, but other things move in arcs so great they are as good as invisible."