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The secret scripture

Sebastian Barry

2008300 pagesabout 5–7 hours
2008
first published
  • 2008Penguin Group USA, Inc. · ENGISBN 9781436223584
  • 2008Faber and Faber Ltd · ENGISBN 9780571247523
  • 2008New York · 300 pages · ENGISBN 9780670019403
  • 2008Faber and Faber · 300 pages · ENGISBN 9780571215287
  • 2008Thorndike Press · 481 pages · ENGISBN 9781410411303

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. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. 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.

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