Reviews for THE SECRET SCRIPTURE by Sebastian Barry
Frank McGuinness
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE is written in voices lonely as the caoin, the most
haunting of all laments for loss, echoing through the ages of the novel, giving it its courage,
its strangeness, its raw, rough beauty. Sebastian Barry’s fiction is unique, and it is
magnificent.
Publishers Weekly
Written in captivating, lyrical prose, Barry’s novel is both a sparkling literary puzzle
and a stark cautionary tale of corrupted power.
The Irish Times
Beautiful and disturbing... Sebastian Barry’s narrative has a poetic element: it
glows with the uncanny luminosity of a twisted fairy tale.
The Sunday Times (Ireland)
Compelling.
The Evening Herald (Ireland)
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE is one of the first great novels of this century.
The Irish Independent
Barry is an unrivalled chronicler of lost lives … he has imagined the life, thoughts
and feelings of Roseanne with such extraordinary empathy that she comes to seem a muchloved intimate of the reader.
Waterstone’s Books Quarterly
Barry’s prose is beautifully crafted. THE SECRET SCRIPTURE leaves the reader
both haunted and moved, raising the question of whether history can ever be truly laid to rest.
The Daily Mail
A poignant story of the horrors and hypocrisies of rural Ireland, the cruelties of civil
war and the pernicious influence of the priesthood. Roseanne is a vivid and engaging
protagonist, and Barry makes rich use of the circumlocutions of his native tongue.
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The Economist
In this book, the worlds each character builds are significantly, tantalisingly
estranged from each other … The novel’s delight lies in the way in which the two tales – and,
eventually, the two lives – begin to coalesce, to the utter surprise of both the characters and
the reader.
The Gloss Magazine
Sebastian Barry’s deeply moving new novel is a beautifully written look at 1930s
Ireland’s darkest secrets.
The Evening Standard
Sebastian Barry’s novel about the First World War – A LONG LONG WAY – was
shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and if there is any justice in the world – which,
incidentally, you doubt after reading him – his latest novel, THE SECRET SCRIPTURE, will
go at least as far. The novel is beautiful and bleak…So, if beautiful and bleak is what the
Booker judges are after next year, Mr Barry is your man.
Booklist
Barry weaves together Grene’s and Roseanne’s stories…masterfully and with intense
emotionality that nevertheless refuses to become maudlin. Another notable part of Barry’s
artistry is the sheer poetry of his prose, now heart-stoppingly lyrical, now heart-poundingly
thrilling. An unforgettable portrait.
Kirkus Reviews
A subtle study…Barry writes vigorously and passionately about his native land…
Barry beautifully braids together the convoluted threads of his narrative.
The Daily Telegraph
Haunting…a beautiful description of traumatic memory…Dark, awkward and
exceptionally finely written.
The Sunday Telegraph
[A] fine, haunting novel....In Roseanne McNulty – sly, confused, defiant, passionate
– Sebastian Barry has created one of the most memorable narrators in recent fiction. Barry
was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker with A LONG LONG WAY and, if there is any justice,
can expect an equally strong showing this year. His novel is a cornucopia of fine phrasemaking and mellow characterisation.
Reviews for THE SECRET SCRIPTURE page 3
The Times Literary Supplement
The dialogue, whatever the careful economy of its pacing, retains an insouciant
naturalism throughout its exchanges…The medium here is dramatic, a narrative for voices
whose power is achieved through the resonant authenticity of the speakers.
The Times
[Roseanne’s] lovely, chiming voice, relating her astonishing story with sadness and
grace…full of gleaming images…It’s a story to treasure, and Roseanne is a teller to
remember.
The Financial Times
The story is very cleverly done, full of little hints of what will be revealed later. The
fact that Sebastian Barry began as a poet is apparent throughout in phrases and images
…there are spectacular dramatic sections here as well…THE SECRET SCRIPTURE is not
at all like its illustrious predecessor but is equally powerful and memorable. It confirms that
Sebastian Barry is at the forefront of contemporary Irish fiction.
The Sunday Herald
A novel of intelligence and artistry.
The Guardian
[Barry] writes with a dramatist’s timing and a poet’s exactitude…The result is a
richly allusive and haunting text that is nevertheless jagged enough to avoid the anaesthetic
of high lyricism…Barry’s destabilising of inherited images gives the book a punkish energy
as well as a fiery beauty. Roseanne’s voice is urgent, colloquial, strange..her turn of phrase
is bleakly funny…The book is arranged and imagined with immense tact, so that it is never
unbalanced by its ironies. Roseanne and Dr Grene, though hardly ever described, are
incarnated with such commitment and narrative astuteness that you feel you are standing in
the rain of their lives. You are reading them, not reading about them…[Barry] makes
enthrallingly beautiful prose out of the wreckage of these lives…[a] magnificent and heartrending novel.
The Irish Mail on Sunday
The most remarkable imaginative universe in Irish writing belongs to Sebastian
Barry, who, like an archaeologist, has slowly and deftly delved back through his myriad
ancestors to let them breathe again … This is a superb book about memory and conflicting
versions of the past.
3/.
Reviews for THE SECRET SCRIPTURE – page 4
The Herald
Exquisitely told, this work is so evocative of place and mood and character that by its
conclusion Roseanne’s Sligo, its windblown beaches and slippery inmates have taken lodge
deep in the reader’s mind, becoming almost like a memory of one’s own.
The Scotsman
A great novel that doesn’t fear history but goes after it.
The Independent on Sunday
Barry remains the master of language in this formidable book.
The Sunday Business Post
Barry’s achievement is to combine the substance of a fine literary work of fiction
with the allure of a detective story.
Image Magazine
Gripping, moving and beautifully wrought.
Metro
The unstable nature of memory and identity is beautifully evoked. Roseanne’s
unreliable memories sparkle – in Barry’s transformative poetic style, even the simplest
description takes wing … another enchanting chapter in Barry’s project of reclaiming the
diversity of Ireland’s past.
The Independent on Sunday (Dublin)
A beautiful book.
The Tablet
Barry’s language is lush and velvety, and the complexities of Irish history and
identities are navigated with exquisite skill.
The Daily Express
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE is both moving and disturbing … Vivid and poetic, it is a
powerful novel set against a backdrop of Ireland’s turbulent history.
Reviews for THE SECRET SCRIPTURE – page 5
Publishers Weekly
Written in captivating and lyrical prose, Barry’s novel is both a sparkling literary
puzzle and a stark cautionary tale of corrupted power.
Publishers Weekly (Galley Talk)
Novelist, poet and playright Sebastian Barry weaves a brilliant tale of secrets,
memory and grief with prose that is both classic and elegant. This is almost a psychological
study of two characters: doctor and patient, their lives and minds…The connection between
these two lost souls is touching, and as their stories unfold, this novel becomes a real pageturner that is not only hard to put down, but hard to forget.
The Boston Globe
Barry recounts [Roseanne’s story] in prose of often startling beauty. Just as he
describes people stopping in the street to look at Roseanne, so I often found myself stopping
to look at the sentences he gave her, wanting to pause and copy them down....When I reached
the last page, I did feel that I had shared a profound experience with each character.
The Oprah Magazine (The Books of Summer)
Luminous and lyrical.
The New York Times
These lives are reimagined in language of surpassing beauty... Sebastian Barry’s
language never gives off a whiff of labor and strain. It is like a song, with all the pulse of
the Irish language, a song sung liltingly and plaintively from the top of Ben Bulben into the
airy night.
Salon.com
Sebastian Barry [is] the most exhilarating prose stylist in Irish fiction - which just
about makes him, by definition, the best prose writer in the English language. Barry has
shown a dazzling facility with poetry, drama and fiction… Sebastian Barry's achievement is
unlike that of any other modern Western writer, a tapestry of interrelated works in different
mediums woven from strands of his past and that of his country. THE SECRET
SCRIPTURE fits seamlessly into a vision that seeks to restore with language that which has
been taken away by history.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] splendid work… Clearly, emotion is at the core of Barry's splendid work, but to his
credit the novel never becomes sentimental. His prose is impressively lyrical and
evocative.