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Missing Persons, or My Grandmother's Secrets

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Missing Persons, or My Grandmother's Secrets

By: Clair Wills
Narrated by: Clair Wills
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

How far would you go for the missing?

When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a Mother and Baby Home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet she was never told of her existence.

How could a whole family - a whole country - abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history?

To discover the missing pieces of her family's story, Clair searched across archives and nations, in a journey that would take her from the 1890s to the 1980s, from West Cork to rural Suffolk and Massachusetts, from absent fathers to the grief of a lost child.

There are some experiences that do not want to be remembered. What began as an effort to piece together the facts became an act of decoding the most unreliable of evidence - stories, secrets, silences. The result is a moving, exquisitely told story of the secrets families keep, and the violence carried out in their name.

©2024 Clair Wills (P)2024 Penguin Audio
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Critic reviews

In its account of one family's history of silence and secrecy, Clair Wills has written a compelling book which demonstrates the uncanny universality of even the most personal stories. Attending to the ways that the past ruptures and grows through the present, this is a history shaken by intimacy - a brave and rigorously humane book. (Seán Hewitt)
If the past is a mass of tangled wool, Clair Wills frees a long strand and knits it into clarity, line by line, inviting the reader to see the complexity of the pattern she reveals. Written with elegance and erudition, Missing Persons is an extraordinary, moving achievement. (Doireann Ní Ghríofa)
Clair Wills retrieves from time’s abyss a speculative history of universal import. This is a penetrating and affecting study, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the profound contradictions, the secrets and lies that define post-famine Ireland. (Paul Lynch)

What listeners say about Missing Persons, or My Grandmother's Secrets

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The purpose in writing the book ..So interesting and relatable .

Firstly the author's voice ..so easy to pay attention to her.
The amount of patient, researching and care when looking for answers ...
I'll probably buy the book and look for the family tree....
congratulations ..

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Beautifully written and narrated.

An in depth exploration of the why's and how's of Irish culture, as well as the discovery of hugely personal family history. Helps to make sense of it all. Thank you Clair Wills.

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The reality of an Irish Family

Claire wrote this book from the Heart and even though there is sadness; She easily describes the reality and acceptance of the times
Well done

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the familiaralities of Clair to me

Having been born at the same time as Clair to an Irish Mam in England ... and discovering 'secrets' that were never to be told since her recent death ... the stories told in Clair's familiar accent assuaged my pain and helped me fill some of my own gaps I have unknowingly carried for over 60 years.

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Back in my time

Loved the lovely way it was put to paper so real and felt as true as could be found with facts to back it up I could fell my own and other families knocking on the door at times sad unbelievable but it happened

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Genuine surprise

Quite niche for a lot of readers but having been on the hunt for Irish explanations in my own family I found it very interesting and very of its time. Well researched and thoughtful.

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