In the Rosary Garden by Nicola White

Nicola White's debut novel begins with the shocking discovery of a dead baby in the grounds of a convent school in 1980s Ireland. From there we follow the stories of Ali Hogan, the young woman who finds the baby and is promptly brought to national attention by a vampiric media, and Detective Swan, who is assigned the task of discovering the infant's fate.

For the latter, White moves seamlessly into the tropes of the detective genre, giving Swan his own troubled personal life, useless partner, and steadfast determination to get to the bottom of the case. Ali's attempts to find her own voice and position as she is paraded on national television allow an exploration of the novel's central examination of sexuality, religion and, most centrally, abortion in the Irish state.

In the Rosary Garden is an accomplished debut that handles its difficult themes with care, guided by the natural voice of an author who lived in Ireland at the time and witnessed the maelstrom of issues at the forefront of society. While the treatment is hardly groundbreaking, the novel deftly weaves together its various elements to present an engaging, non-didactic look at how this issue affected and continues to affect a developing Irish identity. [Ryan Rushton]