THIS month’s Book Group selection is the winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year, The Sacred Scripture by Sebastian Barry, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.

Roseanne McNulty is one of the last remaining residents, one of “fifty ancient women in the central block” of Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she has been incarcerated for half a century, but “really quite beautiful still”.

“I may be as much as a hundred, though I do not know, and no one knows. I am a thing left over, a remnant woman.” But Roseanne has been given a biro by her friend the doctor and found a bundle of paper on which she determines to commit ‘some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself ... Roseanne’s testimony of herself’, hiding what she writes under the floorboards, the secret scripture of the title.

Meanwhile, psychiatrist Dr Grene is also putting pen to paper, completing his case notes as the hospital nears closure and he must make recommendations on which patients might return to the community. Fascinated by Roseanne, his oldest patient, he investigates, uncovering a document that presents a different story to the one she recalls and revealing a shocking secret.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sebastian Barry, playwright, poet and novelist, was born in 1955 in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. His early plays include Boss Grady’s Boys, which opened in 1988, and won the BBC/Stewart Parker Award. His play The Steward of Christendom, first staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995, an Out-of-Joint Production with Donal McCann in the title role, and subsequently transferred to Broadway. It won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Ireland/America Literary Prize, the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play and the Writers’ Guild Award (Best Fringe Play). Sebastian Barry also won the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year award. Our Lady of Sligo was joint winner of the Peggy Ramsay Play Award, and seen off-Broadway. His most recent plays are Whistling Psyche (2004), and The Pride of Parnell Street (2007), two interweaving monologues. His poetry collections include Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever (1989) and his previous novel, A Long Long Way (2005), was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

WIN A WATERSTONES GIFT CARD

Let us know what you think about The Secret Scripture and you could win a £10 Waterstone’s gift card. Email your review to htleisure@midlands.newsquest.co.uk or post it to HTBook Group, Hereford Times, Holmer Road,Hereford HR4 9UJ, with your name, address and contact details. Usual competition rules apply. Deadline is midnight on Monday, May 4.

THE winner of the £10 Waterstones gift card, for her review of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, is Kathleen Cole of Hay-on-Wye. She wrote: “How my heart went out, as the writer conveyed the struggle of a young newly wed couple fighting to cope with their feelings, fears and morals of what should or should not have been. They have such strong devotion towards one another, but how to combat those wedding night nerves, made me, as the reader, scream out willing them this way and that, while at the same time feeling compelled to turn the pages of this brilliant novel, told with such superb observation.”

HOW TO ORDER

The Secret Scripture, £7.99, offer price £7.49; A Long Long Way, £7.99, offer price £7.49; post and packing free. To order, call the Hereford Times Bookshop on 08700 713317 or send your cheque/postal order made payable to Hereford Times Bookshop to: Hereford Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston, TR13 0TP. Allow seven to 10 working days for delivery. Titles supplied subject to availability. Order online at sparkledirect.com

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10. The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry