A Second Life Dermot Bolger | New Island

New and revised edition from original publication in 1994. A Second Life is one of the first contemporary novels to address the secrecy and silence surrounding Ireland’s mother and baby home scandal.  Following a near death experience, Dublin photographer Sean Blake determines to find his birth mother Elizabeth, embarking on a journey into archives, memories, dreams and startling confessions that upend everything he thought he knew about himself. A Second Life marked a watershed moment in Irish fiction when originally published in 1994 as one of the first novels to address Ireland’s complex, often secretive, attitudes towards adoption and the scandal of Magdalene laundries. One of Dermot Bolger’s finest novels, it slowly connects the lives of Sean and Elizabeth, bringing them to a spell-binding, profoundly moving conclusion.

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