Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets

by Clair Wills

Blending memoir with social history, Clair Wills movingly explores the gaping holes in the fabric of modern Ireland, and in her own family story.

In 2015, the Irish government commissioned an investigation into the state’s network of Mother and Baby Homes after the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of up to eight hundred children prompted international outrage. The homes, which operated from the 1920s to the 1990s, were responsible for nearly nine thousand child deaths and countless other abuses.

Yet in the face of overwhelming evidence, everyone seemed to forget what had actually occurred. No one remembered who the babies were, how they died, or where they were buried. A whole society had learned not to look, or not to look too closely, and certainly not to ask too many questions.

Clair Wills’s investigation leads her back to the discovery that nearly thirty years ago a cousin of hers had been born in one of the Homes and her existence had been covered up. As Wills finds out more about her own family’s secret chronicle of loss, her investigation expands into an exploration of the secrets and silences that make up our family stories, the limits of record-keeping, and the fragility of memory itself. Wills unravels a history of illegitimacy that stretches back into her grandmother’s life in Ireland a hundred years ago and forward to her own generation today. Missing Persons reveals the truth that seeps through the gaps in our stories about the past and that is encrypted in things left unsaid―if you learn how to read what is missing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Ireland, Memoir, History, Audiobook, Irish Literature, Biography Memoir

208 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2024

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secret is Clair Wills’ combined memoir, family history, and social history of Ireland and the Irish since the famine. Willis’s initial concerns about her family’s past grew out of her sense of missing people within her family going back at least to her grandmother’s family. And all of her investigations sharpened in the shadow of the Irish government’s investigation of the Mother and Baby Homes primarily run by the Catholic Church for the government since Irish independence until the 1990s. There was now factual evidence for Wills’ concern about her family history and evidence of hundreds or more missing babies and children.

Wills takes several paths in her search for those who might be missing, moving from identifying individuals within her family, to tracing trends in Irish cultural and social history affecting families, trends that changed markedly with both the mid-18th century famine and with Irish independence. The gaps in families are unmarried mothers, babies sent to homes, fathers who left Ireland to avoid responsibility or blame. What I hadn’t expected was how this seems to involve so many and has been kept so quiet. Perhaps it isn’t as quiet now as in the past. I should add that the author is the daughter of an Irish woman who studied nursing in England and married an Englishman. Wills is English but spent summers at her grandmother’s Irish farm and appears to cherish much of that personal history.

Recommended for those with an interest in Irish history, culture and social/family history. Sometimes repetitive but I found that it was in service of reinforcing her different findings.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux through NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book. This review is my own.

[Melissa P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

☘️ Won in a giveaway 🍀

For the most part, I did find this book very interesting. It talks about some Irish history, mainly focusing on pregnancies with unwed mothers, very young mothers etc. It was really sad reading about the young moms who couldn't fend for themselves. They would have to go to these places that housed young women like that. Many babies were put up for adoption or didn't survive. I was drawn into reading about that. There was a lot of other info in the book that made it drag a bit, for me. I also found the history in the author's family interesting and I liked how she did her research and really tried finding out answers to family secrets. I did enjoy it although some parts dragged. I'm glad that I read this because I learned a lot. Thank you to the author, Clair Wills, Farrar, Straus and Gioroux and Goodreads for my free copy. Happy reading. 💚

[Brianna Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this one is super interesting and I like that she had to kind of keep peeling back layers of the story. I feel like there is a lot more that could be said and written about this kind of stuff but the pieces of history and those holding the keys either won’t share or have passed away. It’s interesting that the stories change with time and perspective too, which I’m sure happens very very often.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book looks at the author's Irish family and about missing persons more being born in mother and baby homes which were common in Ireland and tracking a mixture of cultural history and that of her mother's family. interesting and thought provoking

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, for an advanced copy of this book.

In Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets, author Clair Willis investigates the lives and absences of a secret cousin and her mother and father. Willis is taken back to the dark, tragic history of the mother and baby homes in Ireland, societal and religious expectations for women, and a complicated web of family secrets. The book is both well researched and a lot of assumptions. What did we do before the Internet kept track of our families daily lives and connections? There are a number of points the author makes about the missing people in her family, and in Ireland as a whole. There’s more I want to know, and also, I don’t know how I can know it. Secrets seem to be passed down and retold for the benefit or belief of the hearer’s best interest.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressive memoir that failed to live up to its initial promise.
At the beginning, I was thoroughly engrossed in the family’s story but, as another reviewer said: ‘the author's continued cycling of her family history became somewhat repetitive and slow as the memoir progressed.’ I also felt that too much time was spent theorising about what had happened to her grandmother with respect to her being pregnant when she married and not enough time was spent on investigating Mary’s life. In theory, the latter should have been a lot easier to determine because of all the official, concrete records available yet the author chose to make a lot of suppositions about her grandmother instead.
I would have liked more information to be provided on the home Lily lived in with Mary, the life they lived there, and where they went, which would have tied in with the fact that Mary wasn’t the main thrust of the book.
Lily became pregnant by the author’s uncle, giving birth to Mary in a mother and child home, living there together for four (?) years. The grandmother wouldn’t let them marry, though she herself became pregnant before marriage. Ireland had become more moral due to the Catholic Church in the intervening years. Mary herself became pregnant, was also rejected by her partner’s family, and committed suicide

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me a bit of disappointment. I think the author has probably written this book for herself as a kind of therapy in her search for answers to understand her past and her feelings of shame and guilt. However, as an external reader, it does not bring much. There is some information about social history in Ireland, hence the 3*, but also a few repetitions about her feelings which are unnecessary, I felt.
I received a complimentary digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and I am leaving voluntarily an honest review.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was extremely interesting. i think i would have preferred a little more structure in terms of fitting the family story into the larger story so that I could keep it all in my head but the history-focused chapters were very well written and i feel like i learned a lot not only about the mother and baby homes but also about the state of Irish labor and immigration in these periods. also really interesting to watch the author struggle with how she’s portraying people and being too harsh/too easy on them

[Daisy Greenwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fascinating and engaging read

[Aoife Cassidy McM · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most powerful social histories of a country are usually those that weave the personal into them. Fintan O’Toole did it brilliantly with his memoir/Irish social history We Don’t Know Ourselves. Clair Wills, a cultural historian and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, does it here with her memoir, Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets.

The word “secrets” is the operative word in the title and it does a lot of heavy lifting. What is it about Irish society’s obsession with silence and the layer upon layer of dark secrets buried in almost every Irish family? Speak to pretty much any Irish person and somewhere in their family’s history, they will have some unspeakable event or tragedy that has been largely buried but is now written into their DNA.

Wills approaches this question through the lens of her own family, its history of babies born to unwed mothers and the consequences of falling foul of Irish society’s obsession with respectability and sexual propriety from post-Famine mid 1800s through the 20th century.

She delves into her grandmother’s past in an attempt to uncover what motivated her grandmother’s rejection of her own grandchild, despite having found herself in similar circumstances as a young woman.

Certain words and themes crop up again and again in the book: sin, perversion, shame, stigma, respectability, control, sexual morality, illegitimacy, institutionalisation, proselytism, forced adoption, parish priest, nuns, county home, mother and baby home, penitentiary, secrets, secrets, secrets.

We’re a nation still in recovery and arguably, still in denial. Wills is rightly scathing of the Mother and Baby Homes Report which was a State-sponsored exercise in gaslighting, placing as it did the blame squarely with the families who put their daughters and sisters in these institutions, rather than with the Catholic Church and State, who colluded to create a hellish nightmare for women who had no choice but to live with secrets buried deep within.

Are we destined to repeat the mistakes of the past with the same organisations still at the helm of our state-funded schools and hospitals? For the vast majority of young parents today, accessing state-funded secular education is not an option available to them. Religious indoctrination in schools is still par for the course.

Back to the book. A couple of statistics stood out to me: the infant mortality rate in mother and baby “homes” was 5 times the national average. 10% of children in the 1960s joined the clergy, entering seminaries and convents. 10%!

This is an excellent (if at times repetitive) read written in a literary style. The repetition only reinforces the horrors though. While this isn’t necessarily the emotionally resonant read that Bessborough is, it’s a clear-eyed, stinging account of a society that stifled progress and basic human rights for too long and still needs to confront those horrors. 4/5⭐️

[Nick Garbutt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a haunting, disturbing and beautifully written account of the secrets held by the author’s own family.
Clair Wills is both unflinching and unsparing in examining how people who transgressed the strict moral codes of the Irish state were shunned, locked up, expelled and never spoken of.
It is a chilling account of how church, state and society dealt with social deviancy as Ireland tried to show its moral superiority post-independence.
It is highly recommended, yet at the same time it troubled me in that I felt that the story, was not really hers to write, an aspect which also exercised her as well.

[Allegra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans "Missing Persons", Clair Wills détricote le fil d'une omerta familiale. Elle s'interroge sur ce qui pousse plusieurs générations à tenir leur langue face à l'indicible...tout en semant des indices au coin des discussions. L'autrice nous précipite dans l'intimité rurale de sa famille depuis la fin du 20ème siècle en Irlande. Une histoire indissociable des institutions catholiques qui emmuraient les filles-mères et les enfants illégitimes. Deux mondes que l'on voulait aussi opposés que possible. Deux mondes qui se trouvaient à quelques kilomètres de distance à peine, et dont les murs étaient bien plus poreux qu'on ne le laissait croire. Wills pose alors la question de la responsabilité, tant sur le plan privé que sur le plan public et politique : qui sont les responsables de ces vies sacrifiées et de ces familles amputées ? Quelles justifications chaque génération a-t-elle décidé de se donner pour excuser ses propres actions ou ses propres inactions ?
Une lecture instructive, humaine, qui fait froid dans le dos. Elle met au travail l'esprit autant que le cœur. Clair Wills jongle adroitement entre le genre historique et le genre biographique. Les trois premiers quarts du livre m'ont transportée et même un petit peu transformée. Le dernier quart s'est essoufflé légèrement. Il n'en reste pas moins que "Missing Persons" est une lecture qui vaut absolument le détour. Elle aborde des thèmes et des questions qui ont été tus pendant si longtemps qu'on ne cessera d'avoir besoin d'en parler !

[Dem · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

A very well written and narrated family story of Ireland’s heartbreaking past of mother and baby homes.
The author is on a journey to discover her family’s secrets that and what had happened to relatives who for years had been whispered about but still remained a mystery to the author.

Clair Wills has done remarkable research on her family history. She delves into Ireland’s past of mother and baby homes and it’s effect on the families from all angles. However for me the story was repetitive and I became a little bored as the same information seemed be rehashed throughout the book. I think if I was a relative of the author’s family then this would have been fascinating reading.

Its a well written family history book and the audio narration was excellent but not a book for my favorites shelf.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clair Wills’ Missing Persons is a deeply personal yet far-reaching exploration of family, identity, and the harsh realities of Ireland’s institutional history. While the nuances of 20th-century Irish politics and the complexities of Wills’ family tree can be challenging to follow, the book’s core—the intersection of personal stories with the broader history of institutions for unwed mothers—is both compelling and dismaying. Wills skillfully unearths hidden narratives, exposing the societal forces that shaped so many lives, often in heartbreaking ways. Her writing is thoughtful and reflective, making space for ambiguity and unanswered questions. Though the subject matter is often heavy, it’s an important reckoning with a past that still echoes today. A worthwhile read for those interested in history, memoir, and the intersections of personal and national memory.

[Helen O'Toole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read whilst visiting Cork. As I grew up in an Irish Catholic family although in Australia not Ireland, I recognised the hurtful attitudes to pregnancy outside marriage. There were even nasty comments thrown at couples whose first babies arrived only 6 months after a hasty marriage. I would have liked more about Lily and Mary in the Mother & babies home. For Mary to take her own life in such lonely circumstances suggests that the ongoing impact of spending her childhood in such a place caused great harm & misery. How could the author’s grandmother have refused to acknowledge the existence of her own grandchild? And for her son to simply run away to Britain leaving Lily pregnant & alone in that terrible place. A deeply disturbing book.

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving memoir of a twentieth-century Irish family, and Irish society's dark secrets, the missing persons lost to secrets, shame, illegitimacy and tides of emigration. The story is personal but universal. As a historian and first generation Irish immigrant to Britain, Willis exploration of her family's secrets also probes the histories of generations of Irish families, with a critical but empathetic analysis.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and fascinating and familiar. I kept thinking of different sides of my own extended family, who all lived in a different time in a different part of the world, but who sometimes made decisions and kept secrets that make as little sense to me as this author’s did. This was the perfect companion read to Time of the Child.

[EJB · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good solid read that I flew through. just not my favourite book ever. Love when we found something out and the comparisons drawn across generations of her family.
last chapter was also class 🙌

[Aine O · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad but true stories about an Ireland that kept lots of secrets about women and children in institutions- church and state have a lot to answer for.

[Reeta Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a bit like a memoir / history book, in a good way. An engaging way to learn about Irish social history - bloody hell they had it rough.
Big irish families = lots of names and cousins and grandmas , but it doesn’t matter too much if you can’t keep track of who’s who’s very well

[Charlie Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit before I write a review of this book that I'm perhaps a little closer to the author than many readers might be - I am dating one of her nephews and living with her youngest sister. This short history of Wills' family made me confront some missing information about my own estranged extended family, something that I may dig into in the future. This was a heartbreakingly honest look at the histories of Irish families and communities, and their views of pregnancy, women, sex, and secrecy.

[Jim McIntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is a family history examining the stigma and the secrets surrounding to pregnancies outside marriage in rural Ireland, I also learnt a lot regarding the social and cultural history of Ireland after the Famine.
Clair Wills unearths a lot of secrets and trauma in her own family but the book also demonstrates that there are still things from the past that we can't know.

[Jim Cullison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This mesmerizing, if slender volume gets my vote for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. It is chilling, poignant, angry, and compassionate in its excavation of Ireland’s post-Famine cultural history, as well as its autopsy of the author’s family’s self-destruction in the service of social mores. It is 180 pages that will haunt the reader and demand reflection long after this great book is finished.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the mid 19th century Irish history became deeply tragic. The potato blight caused extraordinary famine, so severe that in fact the population of Ireland has never exceeded its pre-famine peak. In the years it was worst at least one million died and one million emigrated. Those without food, wealth or connections were affected most by this - and it was the poorest in society who died or fled. The argument of this book is that this enormous event shaped Irish society decisively, leaving a higher population of bourgeois interests in Ireland and a newly severe morality which was absent in the 1820s or earlier. Central to Irish society was the legitimate transfer of land down through families; and the new power of the institutions of the land, most especially the ascendant rise of the Catholic church. I was deeply surprised to read that in fact the powers of the church grew and grew from the 1880s and 1890s until a peak in the 1950s and 1960s as measured by congregation sizes, numbers in devotion (priests, monks, nuns), donations, pilgrimages, and other soft signs of power. The idea for me that the Irish church was rising while in England and America there was a cultural revolution is anachronistic. This combination of the church and the land interests is argued reasonably to lead to a culture obsessed with patriarchy, sexual morality, and respectability in the eyes of the community.

And where does that lead us? Sadly it leads to septic tanks full of the remains of children abandoned and neglected in mother and baby homes; sexual abuse scandal in the church; and the missing persons of the title. The crimes -and there are crimes - in this story were all done in the name of 'family' but as the author well points out, the family as they understand it was destroyed and indeed forced to roam the earth separately and miserably. The layers of secrets and scandals are variously interpreted as deep and infuriating hypocrisy, and as enormous personal shame that threatened every individual caught up between social morals, religion, and their personal affections and family ties.

Though not a particularly structured work, the writing quality was excellent and the historical and emotional insight deep and thought-provoking. This is a fascinating if deeply upsetting piece of what it is to be Irish and the movement to discuss this history in the open is moving and to some extent inspirational. There is a multi-generational train of heartbreak and shame described here and I only hope the author feels that chain was broken in the process of her life and her decision to write about this history.

Recommended to readers who are aware how upsetting the subject matter might be.

[Ink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Missing Persons written and narrated by Clair Wills is an enlightening and deeply heartfelt investigation into the culture of hiding the pregnancies of unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries

Wills investigation is twofold, part account of evidence found in the 2015 report by the Irish Government and part memoir of their own family history and as such, this adds a deeper, compelling edge to the already heartbreaking story

Wills explores the soceital pressure placed on young unmarried women to save the reputation of their families in the Catholic faith to hide pregnancies and if the baby was carried to term, the young mother would often be sent away to have the child, which was then immediately removed from her. In 2015, after a mass grave of nearly 800 babies was found, the Irish Government took action and commenced an investigation into the nationwide network of "Mother and Baby" homes which in itself hit barrier after barrier of poor or no records and people having no memory of any such thing happening in their family.

In these tumultuous times, a book could not be more relevant. This is a strong account of what "can" happen when faith determines autonomy over a womans body and especially in the light of the Catholic church being in favour of abstinence as opposed to contraception. This is not a debate of what is right or wrong, each to their own, but it is a powerful account of history teaching us a very powerful lesson about 800 souls that were born and had nowhere to go

I had a basic knowledge of this historical trend and the investigation, but Wills provides a very important, well written account and this is further enhanced by the author narrating her own book which adds an extra nuance to the content and further amplifies the strength, authenticity and integrity of this book.

Thank you to Netgalley, Dreamscape Media and Clair Wills for this fascinating ALC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautifully descriptive exploration of family secrets and social history.

The parallels between women of multiple generations was central to this memoir. Yet the way these women dealt with the predicament of pre-marital pregnancy was vastly different due to the social climates of the times in which they lived. Molly, the author's grandmother, simply married in the early 1900s, giving birth to her first child shortly after. But as time progressed to the 1950s, Lily, the parter of Wills's uncle, was banished to one of the newly opened mother and baby homes run by the Roman Catholics as a "refuge" for unwed mothers. Eventually we learn the story of the writer herself, who became a single mother in more recent history (when society began to tolerate women of such status).

I became interested in the history of Ireland's mother and baby homes and magdalene laundries after reading the Claire Foster's novella "Small Things like These." In descriptive prose, Wills explores this grim period of history, weaving in her own research with a family narrative. I found the historical components very informative and shocking.

I found myself drawn in, captivated by the first few chapters. But the author's continued cycling of her family history became somewhat repetitive and slow as the memoir progressed. As a memoir following ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, I would have preferred the story line focused more on the latter than the former.

Overall 3.5/5 for beautiful prose and a good depiction of this controversial period of Irish history.

Thank you to NetGalley/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the eARC !

[Ida · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book was longer. I wish we got to know more about everyone in this book, but I understand why we won't. Many things mentioned happened a lifetime or two ago.

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets is a book about family history, family tragedies, people part of that family and those who were, but suddenly weren't, or never was but should have. Everything is coloured by the culture, politics and religion of Ireland during the 1900s. There's so much tragedy, so many sad destinies. I wonder how these people felt throughout their lives. What they were thinking about. How their lives really were like. Clair Wills tries to imagine, but of course, we cannot know for sure. Educated guesses at best in most cases. Even when it comes to facts, there's still things missing.

The mother and baby institutions are heartbreaking to read about. How horrible women and children were treated. I can't imagine the scars and how forlorn they must have felt. The gruesome find in one of those homes. It's upsetting, to put it mildly. And to have this so close to you, in your own family, never talked about. Silence. It's heartbreaking. Especially when just a generation later having children outside of marriage, were not frowned upon as much anymore.

I enjoyed this book very much. It touched me and made me sad, to put it simply. My only complaints is its length (too short) and that the author repeat certain things almost word for word several times (at least two times) throughout the book.

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

n "My Grandmother's Secrets," Clair Wills delves into the harrowing history of mother and baby homes in Ireland, exploring the societal and familial justifications for abandoning unmarried mothers and their children. The book is a poignant blend of memoir and social history, tracing the author's journey to uncover the hidden truths of her family's past.

Clair Wills' discovery of her cousin Mary, born in a mother and baby home in the 1950s, sets the stage for a deeply personal investigation. As she uncovers the layers of secrecy and silence that shrouded her family's history, she paints a vivid picture of the emotional and societal impact of these institutions. The narrative spans from the 1890s to the 1980s, weaving together stories of absent fathers, institutionalised children, and the grief of lost lives.

What stands out most is the author's ability to decode the most unreliable of evidence—stories, secrets, and silences and her persistence in picking away to put flesh on the meagre records she can use as evidence . She masterfully reveals the hidden lives of women and the violence carried out in the name of family honour. The book is a moving testament to the resilience of those who were erased from history and a call to remember the forgotten.

While the book is a powerful exploration of family secrets and societal norms, some readers might find the slow pace and focus on archival research challenging. However, for those who appreciate a deeply researched and emotionally charged narrative, "My Grandmother

[Rachel Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There is an active element to the refusal, or inability, to remember or to know”

The excavation of a personal archive is one that is fraught with ethical ambiguity yet vulnerable transparency. The heavy weight of silence permeates this text and this active refusal to know or to share is a constant character throughout the personal and familial stories. I am interested in this sense of silence and what is shared vs. what is kept secret. I think of the recent work published by Ariana Mangual Figueroa “Knowing Silence: How Children Talk About Immigration in School” – while a very different topic, it brings to the front this element of knowing silence and how even children know more than is perceived. Mangual Figueroa employs ethnographic method in her text, and Wills uses “a different set of sources, the ones embedded in [her] own family” (p. 23) – she reminds us that “we are our own archives” (p. 24). The culture of religion and puritanical stigma of sex is central to the stories told from and about the women in Wills’ text, she truly takes us through the passing of time through women heavy with child and it is a dark and challenging history to confront.

[Abbie Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

'It's the small-scale stories, alive in the archive, told in statements to the Bureau of Military History, or in military pension files, that bring me closer to the ordinary experience of violence: the half-told stories of youthful enthusiasm for the Republican cause, neighbourly intimidation, bullying tactics, and the mistakes of which no one could be proud.'

I'm a lover of social history and so it was inevitable I'd find this interesting. Personal memoir, familial history, half-remembered conversations and snippets of memories are seamlessly interwoven and contextualised within 19th and 20th century Irish history. The book focuses in particular on the lesser known history of Ireland's unmarried mothers and their appalling treatment.

It's beautiful, terribly sad and treats the topic with humanity. I also appreciated the transparency in the way Wills considers the questions of why she returns to these questions over and over, and why she has the right to tell the story - the potential implications on those involved of speaking things out loud, and on the communities that helped keep them secret.