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Writers are exploitative beasts. Absolution (and justification) are usually extended if the work produced is brilliant and revelatory. Sadly, Penance isn't either. Instigated by her research as a BBC Radio Scotland journalist on a Magdalene Laundry in Scotland and the notorious Lock Hospital in Glasgow, where women suspected of having venereal disease were incarcerated (including seven-year-old girls), Talbot's novel purports to champion the women whose lives were destroyed by having been chucked away by their families, local priests, police and the governments then in charge. Instead it's a racy, contemporary whodunit centred around an Irish female journalist, Oonagh, dying and doubting priests and a male lover. The "fallen" women get a very occasional look in. Using the Magdalene tagline to garner publicity seems gratuitous.
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