Louise Brangan

A searing account ... Enraging ... a detailed, thoroughgoing ... superb if horrifying testament

Louise Brangan takes our hazy ideas of such institutions and replaces them with the stark reality ... Brangan’s remarkable book, thrumming with rage and harrowing to read, is a monument to [the] women and their suffering

Critical, informed and beautifully written, The Fallen makes the case for a genuinely transformative response to Ireland's histories of religious incarceration

Engrossing … it feels part novel … [Brangan] is an accomplished communicator, the reader feels like they are accompanying her as she burrows into the conditions of the soil from which the laundries grew … This meticulously researched book … helps us see more clearly.

The Magdalene laundries don’t make for particularly uplifting subject matter, but Louise Brangan’s investigation into what went on behind their walls is truly shocking. It will make you angry, but I’m so glad I read it.

A terrific yet harrowing unearthing of Ireland's shadowland. I thought I knew about the Magdalene Laundries. I was wrong. Brangan's chronicle is limpid, eloquent and devastating. A landmark book.

Compelling, measured and deeply felt; Brangan cuts through shame and fable to tell the truth about the ‘inconvenient' women whose lives were stolen by the Magdalene Laundries. Indispensable.

powerful ... authoritative, quietly passionate account ... [a] fine narrative

Vivid ... The Fallen is a highly readable and intelligently engaging account of this systemic injustice [of the Magdalene laundries], and it should prompt a wider reflection both inside and beyond Ireland on the ways in which societies can become inured to the evil all around them.

An extraordinary gift ... Within the first 15 pages of The Fallen, this book was inviting me to rethink this history, revealing these institutions and the vexed history of our country in a way I’ve never encountered. My heart was racing as I read the rest (believe it or not, this book is both an education and a page-turner). I am in awe of its meticulous scholarship, and the compelling clarity and courage of the writing. How I wish that it could be studied in every Irish school. Brava, Louise Brangan — I hope I get to meet you someday, to thank you in person for writing this powerful, urgent book.

Louise Brangan’s superb book The Fallen should be taught in every Irish school and university. It depicts the Magdalene Laundries in ways I’ve never encountered. She writes with clarity and an icy fury of these horrific institutions and the injustices they inflicted on Irish women ... A heartbreaking, essential read by a deeply talented writer.

A devastating read ... Brangan’s book forensically charts the history of the laundries through the stories of several women ... It is an account of a near century of unfathomable cruelty, the threat of populist ideology, and the danger of silence and compliance, all made more astounding for its recency.

This exceptional history ... delivers a profoundly haunting account of stolen lives

Louise Brangan has made a serious contribution to a subject that has still not been laid to rest. Her vivid , fluent, frightening and deeply compassionate account of Ireland's shameful treatment of these girls and women deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in our past and our future

A forensic ... detailed and haunting history ... Reading The Fallen, even given all that I already knew of the Magdalene Laundries, the toxic mix of piousness and relentless cruelty became even harder to fathom.

An absorbing , clear-eyed, often unsettling reflection on our all-too-recent history

A riveting but heartbreaking story. Highly recommend it

A vivid, immersive analysis of the history of the Magdalene institutions in Ireland

Brangan offers a granular, humanizing account of what it meant to be incarcerated within the laundries and, in some cases, to never leave. This is no simple feat given the scarcity of records, but Brangan draws on thousands of pages of survivor testimony ... with immense care and precision. ... While The Fallen’s attentiveness and compassion to its subjects is remarkable, perhaps Brangan’s greatest achievement is her portrait of a fractured nation.

A groundbreaking book ... a digestible narrative, presented in controlled prose, albeit just short of steaming with rage ... The Fallen is a powerful and disturbing read ... this book should be retained and displayed in every public shelf and beyond as testament to how a group of people can so easily be cast as “the other”

A readable if harrowing book that raises the question of how far a country can turn in on itself for society to collude with abuses of power

A wrenching reminder that human injustice repeats in the dark corners of human history—and a call to remain attentive

Breaking silence is a catalyst for change and the lived experiences of survivors in this book demand a reckoning, challenging us to ask ourselves what systemic injustices we are normalising to this day.

The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence

When the gates of the last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996, Ireland moved on. Or so it seemed. 
 
Following independence in 1922, Ireland began to chase a dream: to become the perfect Catholic nation. But purity had a price. Throughout the twentieth century, thousands of women and girls who did not conform – the wayward, the poor, the disabled, the abused – were sent to the Magdalene Laundries. Each was perceived to have fallen in some way. Once locked inside, their hair was shorn off, their names were erased – and then they were put to work. They washed, they scrubbed and they prayed, labouring in an attempt to salvage their souls. 
 
Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the last Laundry’s closure, The Fallen is the forgotten story of the Magdalene Laundries, told through the voices of the women who endured them, the nuns who presided over them and the communities that lived alongside them. 
 
Unflinching and compassionate, Louise Brangan draws on archives and survivors’ testimonies to dismantle long-held myths about what the Laundries were, who was sent to these places of violence and secrecy, and why. As we move from the past into the present, Brangan compels us not only to confront this shameful history, but to ask a deeper question: what do we choose to remember?

Louise Brangan

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