Sebastian Barry

Roseanne McNulty, nigh on a hundred years old, has been incarcerated for decades in a Roscomon mental hospital. She records the story of how she got there in notes she keeps hidden under the floorboards. It’s a turbulent tale that encapsulates the early years of the independent Catholic state. She is not and was never insane: she was locked away for having a child out of wedlock.

But times are changing and such ‘patients’ are now being released to the community. The psychologist Dr Grene is there to review her case. He keeps a diary which is about half concerned with his on-going interaction with Roseanne, and half his private life, which forms a kind of sub-plot.

These parallel secret narratives form the basic structure of the novel. We see Roseanne as she is today – and Barry has set himself a difficult task to breathe life into a portrait of an ancient, almost bed-ridden, woman. He succeeds very well, and Dr Grene too gradually takes form. The prose is quite formal and reserved, an old person’s prose that slowly constructs the story.

Therein lies the problem. While there is much to admire in the novel, the scenes from Roseanne’s youth don’t come alive. There’s too much dust and drizzle in them. Her boyfriend Tom for example has studied law at Trinity, plays in a band, has a brother who has been in Africa, a cousin who runs a newspaper. He’s a mover and a shaker by all accounts. That’s the way he’s described, but in actual interactions his dialogue always comes out flat and dead. He talks about what “the mother” said or might say. His manner of speaking is basically interchangeable with any of the major characters. Then his behaviour in the subsequent crisis should imply he has a heart of stone, but the reader is led to believe that he is just a product of the times. Roseanne says that he is “the decentest man”. But the priest and “the mother” exercise a stifling power: nobody escapes. It’s like Barry creates characters only to have them behave precisely as the stock version of history would have them behave. The illustration of history takes precedence.

Part of my frustration with the novel is surely annoyance at the characters. There is a thin line between lack of imagination in the characters and a lack in the author’s depiction. But I thought Barry was at his best in this when depicting the layered thoughts of the patient and doctor when in their advanced years.