IRELAND
Irish Independent
Margaret Madden
May 29 2017
Fiction: The American Girl
Rachael English, Hachette Ireland, €18.40
Boston-Irish Rose Moroney shocks her family when she finds herself pregnant at 17. It is 1968 and while Rose insists she will marry her boyfriend, her mother is having none of it. “There are ways of handling these things.”
The family’s hard-earned reputation is everything to them and Rose is dispatched to Ireland, where she can conceal her condition and place her baby up for adoption.
Young Rose is met by her aunt, a nun in Carrickbrack Mother and Baby Home, and is soon swallowed whole by the religious institution.
The girls are treated abysmally and their babies seen as commodities; sold with no emotional involvement.
Sister Agnes justifies the adoptions in the typical Catholic way: “Unfortunately, many modern girls have peculiar ideas. They think they can do whatever they like without considering the consequences. And, of course, they never pause to consider the pain and shame they’re visiting on their families.”
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