It’s 5 stars from me Sebastian Barry! Well done to you! This is a great book. Excellent story, grippingly told, a balanced pace and each chapter a revelation.
Set in the west of Ireland, the story centres around Roseanne McNulty, an elderly patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and her physician Dr. Grene who has been given the task of assessing and resettling her and other remaining patients, before the dilapidated old building is finally demolished.
Despite the religious intolerance and sectarianism, the abuse and mistreatment of women (all symbolic of Ireland's dark and toxic past), oh my goodness when the prose is this good: intrigue triumphs over despair.
We learn about the characters, their burdens and anxieties through their respective journals. Roseanne, who hides her ’unwanted paper’ under a floorboard, writes that she is ‘… only a thing left over, a remnant woman, and I do not even look like a human being no more, but a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse, and a canvas jacket, and I sit here in my niche like a songless bird …‘. Dr. Grene, a sensitive man, is grieving his late wife whom he loved dearly but in later years were ‘… like two foreign countries and we simply have our embassies in the same house. Relations are friendly but strictly diplomatic.’
Roseanne’s testimony of herself is both distressing and unreliable and at odds with that of Fr. Gaunt, (an interfering old priest who has ominously shadowed Roseanne from childhood) which drives Dr. Grene to investigate further. His findings are unsettling.
I have no problem recommending this novel to anyone interested in captivating fiction. It's unputdownable and I wholly enjoyed it. Barry’s prose is haunting, delicate, expressive and proud.
I heart him :)
I’ve got his 2005 historical fiction novel A Long, Long Way lined up next.