The Secret Scripture

The Secret Scripture is a novel by the Irish writer Sebastian Barry, published in 2008. Its main character is Roseanne McNulty, an old woman who has been a patient at the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital for fifty years or more.

Roseanne is nearing her hundredth birthday as the hospital prepares for closure, which leaves her future uncertain. Over the weeks leading up to that upheaval she talks often with her psychiatrist, Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and becomes more complicated. She also decides to write her own account of her life, which she calls Roseanne's testimony of herself, and it charts her own history and that of her parents living in Sligo at the turn of the twentieth century; she keeps the pages hidden under a loose floorboard in her room and is not yet sure whether she wants them found. The second narrative is the commonplace book of Dr Grene, who has to decide which of his patients are to be transferred and which must be released into the community, and who becomes particularly concerned about Roseanne and begins to try to discover her history.

Barry writes novels and plays that return to the histories of Irish families across the twentieth century, and this book sets two accounts of the same life against each other.