Esther Freud’s ninth novel begins in 1991 with Kate and her young daughter Freya arriving by taxi at a convent in rural Ireland. As they wander around in the grounds reading the inscriptions on gravestones, a nun emerges from the house and demands to know what they are doing there. “My mother, she was here,” says Kate, who was adopted shortly after she was born. But the nun claims she is confused and ushers her off the property.
The actor Niamh Cusack delivers a smart and tender reading of this multigenerational tale, partly inspired by the author’s own family, in which three women’s lives are shaped by a secret. At the centre is Rosaleen, who moves away from her home in Ireland and begins an affair with an older, married sculptor. When she becomes pregnant and finds herself alone, she seeks help from a priest who gives her the details of a mother-and-baby home in Cork. There she finds a sadistic system where pregnant women are set to work cutting the lawn with scissors and given little to eat. Ten days after Rosaleen gives birth, her daughter is taken away.
