Books
Book review: An enormity of suffering endured and eloquently expressed
Magdalene laundry survivor Maureen Sullivan’s bleak account of cruelty and torment is a starkly painful but memorable read
Maureen Sullivan spent much of her time in Ireland’s Magdalene laundry system wondering what she had done to deserve this terrible fate. Beaten, bullied and half-starved, she often felt more like a mistreated animal than a human being.
“Why were they so cruel to me?” she recalls asking herself in her quietly devastating memoir. “I was a little kid, yet they never let me have a minute to look at a book or sing a ...
