Kilkenny based author pens book on her own experience of adoption

Unspoken, is a poignant, eloquently crafted first novel from Kilkenny-based author, Anne Harris.

Anne moved to Thomastown in her retirement after over twenty years living in France and 24 years living in Luxembourg. The author is well travelled yet for most of her adult life a big part of her heart remained in Ireland, where her first son was born in 1970 and adopted shortly afterwards.

Much has been written about the horror and brutality forced on unmarried mothers and their babies and the infamous mother and baby homes. For many people it is unfathomable how this brutality was allowed to exist in a so-called civilised society, unmarried mothers were shunned away from the public eye, only to return months later, without their precious child and expected to carry on living without publicly acknowledging what had happened to them.

This book tells an important story, the story of Anne and her baby boy who was adopted shortly after she gave birth to him in the mother and baby home in Bessborough in Blackrock in Cork. There was no obvious cruelty, nor did she suffer any physical or emotional hardship at the hands of the nuns although there is a strong sense of the unsaid when reading about the main character’s time in Bessborough.

“In Bessborough it seemed to operate on two separate levels, it seemed to be a two-tiered system,” she said, adding that her parents had paid for her to stay there and have her baby, whom Anne had agreed to have adopted.

“My biggest issue is with the Adoption Agency and how they operated. My experience of the home was not as bad as others’.
It was good to have other young women who were in a similar position to talk to.”

Meeting with Anne, some 53 years after she gave birth to her first son she explains that while her book is based on her own story, there are fictionalised elements to it. The driving force which compelled her to publicly share her personal story is that she ‘wanted to record it for her son’.

“I thought it would be for his 40th birthday but as it turned out I gave it to him on the 25th anniversary of our meeting,” she says referencing the first encounter they had as adults.

“This was the reason I self-published the book,” she adds, so that she could create and give her first born son a chronicle of how he came to be.

Anne is scathing of the Adoption Agency and in the book recounts how she travelled with her newborn son by train to Dublin with a social worker. The adoption was agreed but the cold and detached way in which she was treated is unforgettable and the lack of empathy and emotion jumps from the pages.

“The Adoption Agency were very cold. It was all so traumatic and there was no support. The social worker (who travelled with Anne when she brought her baby to be given up for adoption) seemed so uncaring.”

There are many moments of love, hope, kindness and understanding in the book which through the many adverse moments ultimately make it a story of hope, persistence, love, endurance and resilience. It is powerful how simple acts of kindness shine through, one character in the book, Sam is simply based on a kind person who took some time to genuinely be nice to Anne, with no motive other than being kind.

Although the story and many characters are largely fictionalised the pregnancy, adoption and the re-connection with her adult son are all based on her own experience.

“Myself and my son, we both had a positive outcome and we have a really good relationship.

“I want to give hope to people, both to birth mothers and to people looking for their birth parents.

“I also want to send out the message that people need to approach this journey very carefully. I spent a lot of time researching the impact (her making contact with her son) would have. I did a lot of preparation before that initial meeting,”

While this story has fortunately a happy ending there is a realism in the story that makes it clear to the reader that such outcomes are not possible for everyone.

It is a beautifully told work of fiction, based on a true story that is very much worth reading and casts a somewhat bright light on what is one of the darkest chapters of Irish social history.

Unspoken has been shortlisted for an award for independently published books at capawards.iewhich takes place in November.

The Carousel Aware Prize for Independently Published Authors (The CAP for Indies) aims to provide a platform to showcase the cream of Irish self-published authors, bringing them to the attention of book shops, distributors, and the media in Ireland and abroad, with all money raised going to the charity Aware.

Unspoken is available in Thomastown library, and can be ordered through some local bookshops. It can also be ordered online via www.buythebook.ie

Anne Harris was born in Dublin in 1950 and educated in UCD and Harvard in Cambridge, MA.