2023-12-28 16:26:18
Sebastian Barry (Dublin, 1955), one of the most respected authors of Irish literature, usually works in an old rectory in County Wicklow where some Protestant pastor wrote his sermons in the past. The room is small and exudes warmth, so he can be seen through the computer image. A few years ago, his magnificent novel ‘Days Without End’, which will surely be a film, was a Booker finalist (it has two more nominations) and made him known in our bookstores. ‘Time immemorial’ (AdN), his latest work, explores the trace left by the abuses committed in Irish institutions by the Catholic Church. He does so from the critical perspective of the author, a Catholic who married, in his words, a “Protestant girl,” actress Allison Deegan.
Why did you want to write a story as sad as this?
61 years ago I was six or seven years old and my mother and I moved to live in the castle where the novel takes place. My parents had just separated and me and my sister used to see a man looking into the distance in front of the sea. I imagined then that he was the happiest man in this world and that allowed me to write this hard and sad story about someone who has suffered sexual abuse in the past.
In the darkest Time.news of Ireland we can place the old actions of the IRA but also pedophilia on the part of the Church. What prompted you to write about this?
As children in Ireland we were told not to talk about child abuse at all. There was a terrifying case in my family and they used to tell us to shut up. It reminds me of when in ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ they shouted “silence”. Fortunately, my profession has allowed me to give voice to that prohibition and the character of Thomas Kettle, a recently retired police officer who remembers a past of abuse, has allowed me a kind of Irish liberation.
The book is not so much about the abuses committed as its consequences.
Yes, it is the story of a survivor who has had a complex life. One of my grandfathers was dedicated to landscaping and I like to say that he dedicated me to landscaping of the mind. Tom loves the world, but horrible things keep happening to people who love the world.
Do you think the Irish Catholic Church has done everything it needed to do in relation to the victims?
In my family, which was upper middle class, we have a bishop and several nuns and priests, but I, in my humble opinion, believe that the Catholic Church should be dismantled. In the case of Ireland, they have not wanted to make financial reparations to the victims, a horrible situation when the number of religious criminals is very high. And it’s not that there are two or three bad apples in the barrel, it’s that a third of it is spoiled and, furthermore, spoils the rest. If there were still children in danger, and I believe there are, I would like to create some alarm with this novel, to make people more attentive to the danger.
Do you feel that you can now talk about this in your country with greater freedom?
Nowadays, priests do not have the power they had in the past, they can no longer tell you how to behave or what to think. Two of my children are gay and when they say that being gay is not a sin, but homosexual practices are, I get angry. It should be prohibited by law for the Church to express its ideas about people’s sexuality because all they do is cause harm.
How has the novel in his country?
I have received many positive reviews. Bernard Shaw said that evil proliferates when people do nothing. 30 or 40 years ago, if I had thought of writing a novel about this, my neighbors would have denied me greetings. Today Ireland is a better country and that is why I love it. Furthermore, I am not at all a pioneer. What I am receiving is the result of the bravery of others, like Sidney O’Connor, who was ridiculed in the 90s for defying the Pope. I was lucky enough to be his neighbor for two years.
You often use your family members, often inventing stories for them, as characters in your novels. Here his own experience as a child victim of separation is contemplated from afar by the protagonist.
I try to view all the horrible things that happen to us with a certain kind of mercy. For a long time I have tried to write the story of my parents, the most complicated mathematics that could be, but I have only been able to do it through Tom. I haven’t been able to do it directly.
Did you mean that your father was also an abuser?
Not quite. The truth is that she didn’t frequent him. He passed away last year and I hadn’t seen him in a decade. The only thing he showed towards his children was indifference. I don’t think I’ve ever understood him. I am his son, but in a way it is as if he had not been my father. I have four children and for me a father is the person you go to for advice – yes, I admit that I am a bit sentimental – but my father would have been the last person he would have turned to. The question you asked could only be answered by him and I am very glad that I am not the one to answer it.
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