With the library closed, and all my lockdown loans returned via the library letter box, I am back to reading books from our own bookshelves. This turned out to be a good thing as I had completely forgotten the story in this book and therefore the ending came as a complete surprise to me.
I have read loads of books over the years and I seem to have a talent for mentally discarding what I read, even if I really enjoyed the book. Yesterday I was looking at a huge list of books that were collected together as a collection that everyone should read in their lifetime. As I looked down the 1001 titles, I thought I had read about 60 of them, but it could be more, because there were plenty of titles that looked familiar, but I really couldn't say for sure that I had read them.
So, back to the book in hand. The Secret Scripture is set in Ireland and the story spans the greater part of the 20th century. The tale is told mostly through the journal writings of a 100 year old woman called Roseanne, who is a patient in a psychiatric hospital, and her doctor in his commonplace book. Roseanne has been a patient in mental institutions for around 50 years, and it is only when the hospital is about to be demolished, and the patients moved, that anyone thinks to question why she was admitted in the first place.
The story tells of great social injustice and cruelty towards women who have found themselves on the wrong side of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Roseanne's father was a Presbyterian in a strongly Catholic community and he was the local grave digger. She and her father had a close relationship while her mother struggled with her mental health and provided little comfort to Roseanne in her childhood.
One evening, while Roseanne and her father were at the graveyard, a group of soldiers arrived threatening violence and carrying the recently deceased body of one of their group who has been shot by their opponents. Not really knowing what to do, Roseanne's father sends her to fetch the Catholic priest, and it is the priest's anger at being drawn in to the events of the night that forms the catalyst for his vindictive behaviour in following years.
This is a fictional account, but it is based on the real experience of many women who found themselves committed to mental hospitals after having illegitimate babies, or affairs, outside of marriage. It is hard to believe that this kind of thing took place in living memory, and so little was done to stop it. The great sadness of the book is that Roseanne is finally proved to be wrongly committed to the hospital, but now, at 100 years old, she will never be able to make the most of being free.
The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Costa Book Award for 2008, so it is well written and the two journals are neatly woven together to provide the story. It is well worth reading.
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