ABSTRACT
In ‘At Olivehill,’ William Trevor’s narrative dealt with a personal secret as well as with the tensions in landscape on a local as well as on a global scale. Dermot Bolger’s novel A Second Life: A Renewed Story1 focuses on the unveiling of a national secret and the implications of a scandal on indivi dual lives. But both texts hinge around the way past and memory are narrated in contemporary Irish society and how they are linked with places and landscape. In both narratives the processing of images is central. However, in Trevor’s text Mollie gradually retreats in the dark privacy of her drawing-room to keep the changes of her estate out of her view, while Bolger’s narrative contributes to opening the debate of the Magdalene laundries scandal by questioning the visibility of their history in the public space. And yet, because the history of the Magdalene victims is mostly locked2 away in dark drawers, most of the ofcial archives being still inaccessible, historians need therefore to rely on the collecting of personal stories and oral testi monies for their research.
