Harriet and Maddie are mistress and servant of a landed estate in Northern Ireland of the 1890's. When Harriet locks up her 4 year old daughter in a 'punishment room', alone, neither woman realises that the events that follow will haunt them and their descendants for years.
This story is told in the 2 different voices of Harriet, from a prison cell, as she writes her story in a little note book given to her by a priest, and Maddie, as an old lady from her room in a nursing home, told to Anna, who visits her as she waits to die. Both women hold secrets they kept hidden, until Maddie is driven to share both with Anna 70 years later, in the 1960s.
This is a haunting tale of maternal and carnal love, told with poetic lyricism. Thought provoking and quite disturbing, it raises questions about the many manifestations of mothering and its consequences. We are left to marvel that fearful histories turn on such small chances of fate.
Recommended, especially for the philosophers among you!
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