The Magdalen by Marita Conlon-McKenna Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Magdalen
Book Review: Characters that stir you up...
Summary: 5 Stars
that's what I look for in a book, people that get me involved. I get paid to proofread and copyedit books. Over the last 25 years and more than four thousand books, The Magdalen ranks in my top 100.Book Review: Disappointing, really.
Summary: 2 Stars
The topic and the story line are really compelling--there's so much potential. The note on the cover that it's an Irish Bestseller sets readers up with very high expectations. For me, though, the storytelling was bland: not enough vivid description to really put me there (and there's SO much opportunity for this, what with the contrast between the open and wild western part of Ireland and stuffy, confined Dublin) and a lot of awkward dialogue (with a great many exclamation points!) makes the characters seem stilted. There are quite a few moments where things are repeated, or explained so similarly to other things that much of the story's potential momentum is lost. I'm glad I read it, for the topic, but I was hoping for a better experience.Book Review: Effective BirthControl for Teenagers
Summary: 2 Stars
A lot of feeling sorry for yourself in this book and no redeemable characters. Society was a lot harder on teenager pregancy 50 years ago, especially in Ireland. The nuns provided a home for these girls and I'm sure the nuns didn't live so much better than the girls themselves. This wasn't 1990s America. I guess I'm not such a fan of having teenagers "bring their babies to school every day" and "playing parents" as is accepted today.Book Review: Followers of Magdalen
Summary: 5 Stars
This story as told by Esther tells us where we have been and how important it is to humanity to never return. The reality of the title could not be more in line to a previous story in Christian history that of Mary Magdalen, this the story of a group of young women that were out-cast in Ireland during this period. I feel the writer has delivered the message in sincerity to the facts and to the times and culture of 1950's Ireland and across much of the world with the exception of how these young women were placed in these institutions and stripped of their human dignity and basic human rights.Why in Ireland and other places were not the men held to task? Why was the moral obligation placed entirely upon the female of a relationship that obviously requires two? No where in the theology of Christianity is the male placed in superiority and the female a lesser being, except by the interpretation of man in the development of early Christianity and in the established church. Not to minimize the help the church apparently provided with food and shelter, but to question why the church took a moral high ground in placing itself in the position of judging these women and their families, thus releasing the males from their responibilities and their Christian duties toward these women? Why do societies worship class distinction above humanity? Why do we as a society hand over personal responibility to an established religion and expect just and fair treatment? These questions present in Ireland then and still today and elsewhere in the world should call everyone to reflection and revision.
Throughout the book we read little to none regarding the father of this child of Esther, why? How could the church stand on a moral high ground in Ireland or elsewhere when its position was truly one-sided and at times inhumanly governed? How could religious orders support this position? The Magdalen presents these issues in their day and and we can read the effects the position of the church and culture had and continues to have today to some extent.
These women are indeed followers of Magdalen, out-cast by the oppression of the times and culture of her day. This book is superb and offers us the experience of the past and a chance to create a brighter future.
Book Review: THE MAGDALEN SISTERS...
Summary: 5 Stars
It is little wonder that this book was a number one bestseller in Ireland, as it deals with a shameful episode in its history, that of the Magdalen Laundries. Run by the Catholic Church, these were homes that were set up for "fallen" women. Originally set up for prostitutes, they devolved more into homes for unwed mothers. Young women, many of whom were teenagers, who found themselves unwed and pregnant, were often sent there by their families. They would then work in the adjacent laundry of the home until they gave birth, at which time the child would be removed to an orphanage and placed for adoption.
Many of these young women, called penitents by the Catholic Church, were often deserted by their families. They would then find themselves living a lifetime of servitude in the Magdalen Laundries for their transgression. That these laundries existed until 1996 is, in and of itself, scandalous and almost incomprehensible. This book gives a fictional account of such a woman. It is through her eyes that the reader sees the travesty that was known as the Magdalen Laundries.
Esther Doyle was one such woman. She lived an isolated life in rural Connemara, where she was forced by her father to leave school at an early age, in order to help her mother around the house, after her mother gave birth to mentally challenged child in 1944. An intelligent but naive young girl, Esther would spend her days helping her mother and taking care of her baby sister, Nora Pat. After her father disappeared one night, while fishing at sea, and was later washed ashore, having drowned, life became hard for the Doyle family. Yet, left penniless, they managed to survive.
In 1951, Esther, now a pretty teenager, met a young, handsome ne'er-do-well named Conor O'Hagan at a dance. As he was not a local, having just moved to Connemara from West Cork, her family viewed him with some misgivings. Still, Esther found herself in the throes of first love with this young man, only to later find herself pregnant by him and then betrayed, when she discovered that he was also seeing someone else whom he intended to marry.
Coupled with the fact that her younger sister, left momentarily unattended, died an unnecessary death, Esther's mother was less than sanguine about Esther's condition when it was discovered. Reviled by her mother and her brothers for the shame that her condition would bring upon the family, Esther was spirited away by her Aunt Patsy and sent to the Holy Saints Convent in Dublin. While there, she would work in its infamous Magdalen Laundry to earn her keep, while she awaited the birth of her baby.
At the Holy Saints Convent and its Magdalen Laundry, Esther would discover what hell on earth was. Harshly treated, given only the minimum of food necessary to survive, Esther would spend her days toiling in the hot, steamy laundry, along with other such women with whom she bonded in a unique sisterhood. Some of them were women who had spent their entire lives there. Some were the victims of rape and incest, while others were simply young, unwed mothers such as Esther. All were subject to the reign of terror orchestrated by the nuns who ran the Magdalen Laundry.
It is at the Magdalen Laundry, however, that Esther's world view is broadened. It is through her suffering at the hands of those whom she had supposed would have protected her that Esther truly comes of age. When her child is born, Esther comes to think of herself as a person independent of her family and finds the courage to realize for herself a vision of a new life. She envisions one outside the walls of the Magdalen Laundry and one beyond that of the family who had so cruelly renounced her in her hour of need.
This book is written is crisp, clear, terse prose, with little sentimentality. It is a straightforward story that has overtones of the melancholia that often permeates Irish Catholicism. For this book, such is simply fitting. This is a wonderful book that places one of Catholic Ireland's most shameful secrets on public display in a fictionalized setting that perfectly showcases it.
Those readers who are interested in this subject matter will also enjoy the film, "The Magdalen Sisters", which also fictionalizes life in the Magdalen Laundries. One should view it on dvd, because the dvd contains a heartbreaking British documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate", which contains actual footage of the Magdalen Laundries and interviews of three survivors of the Magdalen Laundry experience.
More The Magdalen reviews:
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