“Sure, Aren’t the Church Doing Their Best?” Breaking Consensual Silence in Emer Martin’s The Cruelty Men

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter considers how a significant number of contemporary Irish writers have been inspired by stories of institutional abuse which had remained concealed from the public domain until recently. Drawing on the notion of “consensual silence”, the chapter explores specifically Emer Martin’s novel The Cruelty Men (2018) as a text that addresses institutional abuse, rescues the unheard voices of the victims and inscribes their untold stories into the nation’s cultural narrative. If The Cruelty Men joins a long list of “post-Ryan” fiction in denouncing how silence has traditionally been woven into the fabric of society and politics in Ireland, the chapter argues that, more importantly, Martin’s novel asserts the healing power of storytelling as a way of renegotiating Ireland’s relationship with the silences of the past.