The marriage bed - Regina McBride

Acclaimed author Regina McBride has crafted a lyrical and sensuous novel about a woman trying to reconcile her past and her present, set in early twentieth-century Dublin. 'To my husband's mother, I was a kind of empty vessel like the Virgin Mary who would carry holiness in her womb.' When Deirdre is orphaned aged fourteen, her elderly grandmother takes her from the remote island of her birth to the Enfant de Marie convent on mainland Ireland. Deirdre dutifully trains to become a nun, although it is not her true vocation. However, when Mrs O'Breen sees her for the first time, Deidre appears to be the perfect choice for her son Manus: pious, graceful, meek and subservient. But she is not really any of these things. Deirdre tries to conform to the expectations of others, and so is in constant conflict with her real nature. At heart, she is still the wild, headstrong island girl she once was; a girl who is unable to let go of the deep secret she has carried with her from the primitive Great Blasket Island...