The author told us he could not imagine what it would be like in reality to be in such a scene. He told us he worked in adoption and was used to managing these 'discoveries' in real life. One close reader of the novel who spoke at the book club took a new angle on how a novelist might choose to solve such a mystery. From Tom Jones to Bleak House, classic fiction is full of scenes in which characters discover their true parents.

The Secret Scripture involves a mystery about the identity of one of its characters' parents. The author entertained us with the other endings he could have provided, including a 'posh, get-out-of-it-smoothly ending', but he robustly defended his 'Dickensian' dénouement, citing Victorian fearlessness about the use of coincidence as a precedent. Barry admitted that, from the first, there had been dispute about the ending, and that even some of those readers who loved the book could, at best, only 'forgive the ending, in a Christian way'. One of the pleasures of the Guardian book club event, however, is that it presumes prior knowledge of the book, so readers and author were allowed to be quite explicit about the novel's climactic revelation. There may be readers of this column who have yet to reach the novel's final chapters, so I must be evasive about the precise plot twist that has provoked the arguments. S ome critics have complained about the ending of Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, which involves what has been thought a hard-to-take coincidence.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry