The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| Book Talk: The sin of envy on a small Greek island Posted: 20 Dec 2012 07:53 AM PST TOKYO, Dec 20 — After a Greek bride is abandoned at the altar and her prospective bridegroom is found blinded from an acid attack, local villagers are baffled until Hermes Diaktoras, a portly man in white tennis shoes, arrives to help.  Author Anne Zouroudi. — AFP pic Zouroudi, who married a Greek fisherman and lived for a while in the remote Greek islands, spoke with Reuters about the origins of her sleuth and the themes that underpin her series. Q: What started the series? A: "When I came back to England with my tail between my legs and a failed marriage and a small child in tow, I wrote the first book in the series, 'The Messenger of Athens' kind of to get the issues out for myself, to understand for myself what had gone wrong and why it hadn't been this idyll. I was expecting to live the rest of my life there. So I think 'The Messenger of Athens' is quite a bleak book, really, sort of explaining to myself and to the world what I found in a very isolated and very tiny Greek community. "But the lead character in that book is obviously slightly worldly and I based him on my interest in Jungian archetypes, actually. The idea of this figure of justice had immense appeal to me and I think he really appealed to readers as well. So when the first book was published, Bloomsbury really liked that character and said, come on, we can do more with him. "So because the first book was based around lust and love, and there were very blurred lines between lust and love, I thought, you know, lust is supposed to be a sin so we could go through the seven deadly sins. That's how the series was born." Q: You said you were working through issues, why choose the detective story form? A: "Because I wanted to write something that I would like to read, and I love to read crime ... When I travel, I like to read books that are about the place that I'm visiting, and yet I could find very few novels of any description based in Greece. "It seemed to be a market where there was a bit of a dearth, actually. So I really wrote originally a book that I would like to read, and happily other readers seemed to like them too." Q: You said Hermes was kind of a Jungian archetype — how else did you come up with him A: "The story of his appearance is actually quite an interesting one. In the Greek islands in winter, there isn't very much to do. One Sunday afternoon, my ex-husband and I took a walk to the local cemetery because where else are you going to go? When we got there, there was another couple there, and one of them was a man I didn't know. I hadn't seen him before, which once again is very unusual in small Greek islands in winter "He was a very elegant man. He was wearing a suit and a raincoat, and he had owlish glasses and a quite distinctive hairstyle, distinctive longish gray curls. He was standing on the cemetery wall and looking down onto the sea. He was such a striking character that when I came to think of a description of Hermes he immediately came to mind. But rather unglamorously, he turned to out to be the new manager of the bank of the island where I was living ... I should say, though, that the bank manager was not wearing the white tennis shoes, they were another quirky detail that came from childhood." Q: So then he gradually developed? A: "The fact is, through the books Hermes never changes because it's the nature of who he is and what he is, not to change. Readers can make of him what they will, but to me, he is an incarnation of the god Hermes. My theory on the gods is this: as we have slowly forgotten about them, the immortals have begun to age, very slowly. So over millennia Hermes has begun to age and become quite portly, he is going a bit gray. My theory is that if we started to remember the old gods — and I think to an extent that's happening (and) the Greek myths are becoming quite voguish at the moment — perhaps he might reverse and revert to his original golden youth and become young and dashingly handsome again." Q: Are you doing books on all the seven deadly sins? A: "Yes, I've just finished the seventh. It's out next June in the U.K. So we're at a bit of a crossroads with Hermes right now, where should we go next?" Q: So you're not finished with him? A: "No, I don't think so, because I have a quite big fan base here in the U.K and abroad. People are just loving the character. They love the idea of this character who just turns up from nowhere, fixes everything and then quietly melts away ... It's at the heart of all crime fiction, really, but I think because Hermes is not a policeman and it's based more on natural justice rather than legal justice, people find that really appealing. But now having done the seven deadly sins, where should he go next? I'm thinking the Ten Commandments, maybe. We're still thinking about it." — Reuters |
| Lawyer who foretold church scandals writes his story Posted: 20 Dec 2012 07:44 AM PST LONDON, Dec 20 — Ray Mouton was a successful young lawyer in Lafayette, Louisiana, respected in the community and blessed with a loving family, when he received a call from a vicar in the Roman Catholic diocese for a lunch meeting on a fateful day in 1984.  "In God's House" was a work of atonement for Ray Mouton. — AFP pic What followed over the next few years was the uncovering of an institution riddled with paedophile priests on a national scale and efforts at high levels in the Catholic Church to hide the problem away. For Mouton, it meant the end of his law career, health problems, and anger, depression and guilt. After many years of writing from his self-imposed exile in France, he finally tells his story in the novel "In God's House". It is a harrowing read laden with sickening detail, but also for Mouton, a work of atonement. "There's not a day I don't think about the children. When I was writing the book, whenever I wanted to quit, I thought about the victims and their families," he told Reuters. In person, Mouton, now aged 65, looks like a southern lawyer from central casting, with a head of thick white hair and a sonorous Louisiana drawl. He chose to tell the story in novel form although the characters, from the lawyer to a senior Vatican official who proves an obstacle to addressing the scandal — are based on real figures. "The novel is a dramatic experience. My experience was a traumatic one. Every day there were revelations. I didn't want to believe, the country didn't want to believe," he said. Mouton and his family — Cajuns whose ancestors came to Louisiana as part of the Acadian diaspora — were strongly Catholic. His family had donated land for the cathedral in Lafayette and built schools, churches and a seminary. When he first agreed to defend the priest, Father Gilbert Gauthe, he believed he was dealing with an isolated case. "I believed priests were somehow superior. I had never heard of a priest having sex with a child. I could not believe a Catholic priest could do this. I thought he was just one then it all unravelled. In that diocese alone there were a dozen more." The church preferred to deal with the problem by paying off victims' families. But one family wanted to see justice done. As a lawyer, Mouton believed Gauthe had the right to a fair trial. He soon realised the church was deeply compromised. It had known about Gauthe's crimes since his days in seminary but had moved him around various parishes, where the abuses continued. The church was in effect harbouring criminals, Mouton said. "I did start out on the side of the church. I couldn't imagine they had foreknowledge," he said. Mouton joined forces with Father Tom Doyle, a canon lawyer in the Vatican Embassy in Washington, and Father Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist priest who treated sexually deviant clergymen. The two had heard many other cases across Louisiana and the United States — and attempts to bury the problem. Believing they had the support of the church hierarchy, they set out on a crusade to bring it into the open and seek justice for the victims. They spent a year working on a document detailing the scale of the abuse, the steps the church should take to address it and the consequences if it did not. It stated that there was a national crisis involving dozens, if not hundreds, of priests. "It told them what the deal was — you'll lose 1,000 priests and a billion dollars." They hoped to present the document to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for debate. But after a meeting in a Chicago hotel in 1985 with a cardinal, they were told to kill it. "They put the reputation of the church above the value of the little children. They did all they could to avoid scandal." Fall from grace "In God's House" details a powerful apparatus at work involving local politicians, expensive lawyers, insurance companies and bishops. It also reached into the Vatican, which Mouton says considered the institution above the law. It also shows the devastation of the victims and their families — shame, anger and frustration as well as physical damage. Many were told that to seek redress would be disloyal to the church, adding further conflict to their emotions. Mouton himself suffered verbal abuse and even death threats in the community for defending Gauthe. He was accused of trying to extort the church for exorbitant fees. He put up an insanity plea for Gauthe but the priest himself insisted he was sane. He was sentenced to 20 years. However, a senior jurist in Louisiana involved himself personally in Gauthe's case. Instead of going to a prison that was a treatment facility for paedophiles, the priest was sent to a prison where juveniles were held. He was released after serving only half of his sentence Gauthe was picked up in Texas soon after his release for molesting a 3-year-old boy, but put on probation rather than being sent back to prison. Mouton's marriage broke up and he became an alcoholic. "It was a cataclysmic event. It broke me in half. I did fall from grace," he said. It took many years but subsequent events have vindicated Mouton as widespread sexual abuse by priests came to light across the United States and the world, from Ireland to Australia. The church and its insurance companies have paid out more than US$2 billion dollars (RM6.11 billion) in the United States, bishops have been disgraced, and its reputation has suffered to the point that the faithful have deserted in droves. Mouton now lives in southern France close to the Pyrenees with his second wife Melony and travels frequently to Spain, Mexico and other countries. He is still bitter about the cover-ups and that many of those responsible have never been brought to justice. Nor has the problem been eradicated, he believes. "I don't think we've reached critical mass on it yet. The question is what can the church do? The church needs to release all the documents and demand the resignations of those involved." The novel is dedicated to Scott Anthony Gastal, the first child to testify in court against a bishop, and to the victims and their families, who, he says, "were abandoned not by their God, but by their Church". "I was haunted by my experience. I felt I had to do something," he said. — Reuters |
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