Latest news with #OpusDei
The Hindu
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Nostalgia and La Dolce Vita should fight out the finish of the Teena Katrak Memorial Independence Million
Nostalgia and La Dolce Vita should fight out the finish of the Teena Katrak Memorial Independence Million, the main attraction of Friday's (Aug. 15) races. Rails will be announced one hour before the first race. 1. UNFORGETTABLE YOU PLATE (1,400m), Cl. III, rated 40 to 66 — 2.00 p.m.: 1. Flaming Lamborgini (3) Mosin 61, 2. Lord And Master (2) T.S. Jodha 57, 3. Opus Dei (8) C. Umesh 56.5, 4. Spanish Eyes (4) Sandesh 55.5, 5. Fable (1) Ramswarup 54.5, 6. Shirsa (6) S.G. Prasad 54.5, 7. Ghirardelli (5) Antony Raj 54 and 8. Chardikala (7) Trevor 53. 1. SPANISH EYES, 2. FABLE, 3. CHARDIKALA 2. B.K. LAGAD SALVER (1,000m), Cl. II, rated 60 to 86 — 2.30: 1. Cellini (3) Vivek G 59, 2. Bubbly Boy (2) S.J. Sunil 57.5, 3. Turn And Burn (5) Parmar 57, 4. Esperanza (4) Aditya 56.5 and 5. Mr. Brainwash (1) Shubham 53. 1. TURN AND BURN 3. MAYOR'S TROPHY (2,000m), (Terms) Maiden, 3-y-o only — 3.00: 1. Arrived (2) Sandesh 56, 2. Brasilier (7) Siddharth 56, 3. Caradoc (1) Trevor 56, 4. Harrison (4) T.S. Jodha 56, 5. Illusionist (5) S.J. Sunil 56, 6. Little John (8) Gore 56, 7. Dexterity (3) Neeraj 54.5 and 8. Heart (6) Antony Raj 54.5. 1. ARRIVED, 2. CARADOC, 3. DEXTERITY 4. LUCKY LUCIANO TROPHY (1,600m), Cl. V, 4-y-o and over, rated 1 to 26 — 3.30: 1. Daianne (10) Bhawani 59.5, 2. Silver Braid (3) Neeraj 59.5, 3. Ma Cherie (6) S.G. Prasad 59, 4. Oh Kay (1) Vivek G 59, 5. Cascade (5) Aditya 58.5, 6. Marlboro Man (9) Ramswarup 58.5, 7. Yuletide (7) A. Prakash 58.5, 8. Taabiir (2) Antony Raj 58, 9. Exotic Star (8) Mosin 54.5 and 10. Highground (4) Peter 53.5. 1. MARLBORO MAN, 2. OH KAY, 3. MA CHERIE 5. TEENA KATRAK MEMORIAL INDEPENDENCE MILLION (2,000m), Cl. IV, 4-y-o and over, rated 20 to 46 — 4.00: 1. Bugatti (11) Ajinkya 59.5, 2. Endurance (5) Yash 58.5, 3. King Ke (2) Vivek G 58.5, 4. Land Of Plenty (10) Trevor 57, 5. Black Thunder (3) Sandesh 56.5, 6. Nostalgia (12) Antony Raj 56.5, 7. Alexandros (7) Neeraj 55.5, 8. Esconido (1) Mukesh K 54.5, 9. Uzi (8) T.S. Jodha 53.5, 10. Sands Of Dubai (4) Nirmal 53, 11. La Dolce Vita (13) A. Prakash 52.5, 12. Beyond Stars (6) Aditya 52 and 13. Goldiva (9) N. Bhosale 50. 1. NOSTALGIA, 2. LA DOLCE VITA, 3. LAND OF PLENTY 6. THANDA PLATE (1,000m), (Terms) Maiden, 3-y-o only — 4.30: 1. Golden Degree (10) K. Pranil 56, 2. Aeon Flux (4) Gore 54.5, 3. Arlington Heights (---), 4. Beat The Heat (11) C. Umesh 54.5, 5. Dreamer (9) Parmar 54.5, 6. Foujita (2) Vivek G 54.5, 7. Foxy (5) T.S. Jodha 54.5, 8. Heaven's Rhythm (3) S.J. Sunil 54.5, 9. It's My Way (1) Bhawani 54.5, 10. Lara (6) Antony Raj 54.5, 11. My Honey (---), 12. Santana Row (8) A. Prakash 54.5 and 13. Sky Full Of Stars (7) A. Gaikwad 54.5. 1. DREAMER, 2. SANTANA ROW, 3. FOXY 7. SENTOSA COVE PLATE (1,100m), Cl. IV, rated 20 to 46 — 5.00: 1. Scaramouche (5) Aditya 60, 2. Cinderella's Dream (6) Sandesh 59.5, 3. Kavya (4) Parmar 59.5, 4. Western Star (2) Antony Raj 59.5, 5. Abhicandra (8) Neeraj 59, 6. Rafael (7) Santosh 57.5, 7. Maysara (13) Peter 54, 8. Applause (10) Mosin 53.5, 9. Flashman (3) A. Prakash 53, 10. Adonis (9) S.J. Sunil 52, 11. Gobby (12) S.G. Prasad 52, 12. Myru (1) Sonu 52, 13. Ananya (---) and 14. Exhalt (11) N. Bhosale 50.5. 1. KAVYA, 2. SCARAMOUCHE, 3. CINDERELLA'S DREAM Day's Best: DREAMER Jackpot: 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7. Treble: 4, 5 & 6. Tanala: All races. Super Jackpot: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7.
Irish Times
11-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Recruited to Opus Dei at age 15: ‘I don't think I've ever come to terms with the enormity of what happened to me'
When Anne Marie Allen was fifteen she was accepted into a catering college with dreams of becoming a chef. Instead she was tricked into a life of domestic servitude with Opus Dei, an institution of the Catholic Church that was founded in Spain in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá. Allen worked part time in a local hotel in Ballyvourney Co Cork when two women arrived to her family home saying that they were interviewing for a free catering course. The women said that Allen would receive pocket money of five pounds a week and a job guaranteed by the end of the two year course. This meeting began the 6 year long ordeal chronicled in Allen's memoir Serve: My Lost Years at the Heart of Ireland's Opus Dei . In this episode of The Women's Podcast, the Cork author discusses her experience. READ MORE After a few weeks Allen began to notice 'there didn't seem to be any catering teachers there. There were members of Opus Dei.' These members of Opus Dei were known as 'the local council, the directors, the sub directors, and the Secretary. 'But none of them seemed to have qualifications in catering,' adds Allen. As a teenager she cooked, served, ironed, washed, scrubbed for the members of Opus Dei. 'Not long after I joined, maybe a couple of months, I was called up into the director's bedroom, and she gave me this little bag, and I opened it up, and there was a chain, a kind of barbed wire with two cords in it and a whip. 'She said, 'these are for mortification',' recalls Allen. Allen says that she was told to wear the chain on her leg for two hours every day, and on occasion for an extra hour a day depending on behaviour. The whip was used 'on your back, your legs or your bum'. 'There was other mortifications as well,' says Allen, including but not limited to sleeping on the floor without a mattress, sleeping without a pillow and cold showers. 'They were obsessed with the idea of temptation, of temptation and sin, the occasion of sin,' she says. However, 'the chain and whip were nothing in comparison fraternal correction,' says Anne Marie. 'Fraternal correction as it was marketed to us was a way of helping us improve our spiritual life and and how to become more aligned to the perfect member of Opus Dei. But what it was a form of behavior control'. Fraternal corrections were verbal reprimands from your peers based on conduct. 'You were only supposed to get one a week but I remember getting two a day'. Although Allen says that she is in a 'good place now', she says she will 'always be recovering' from her time in Opus Dei. 'I don't think I've ever come to terms with the enormity of what happened to me and what happened to us all. I know. I don't think I'll ever get over it. I will never stop fighting to correct it'. You can listen back to this conversation in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Advertiser
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
When you realise you're being subjected to gay conversion therapy
New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter.
ABC News
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Purity, hypnosis and hiding — how a gay teen survived Opus Dei
Tim Pocock grew up under the thumb of his charismatic, devoutly Christian mother. He went to a school with links to the controversial, secretive and conservative Catholic organisation, Opus Dei. There, he desperately tried to hide his sexuality, and was ruthlessly bullied for his musical and stage talents. Despite Tim's success in Australian opera, television, and in Hollywood blockbusters, he continued to harbour many secrets about himself and his family. One day his mother, who loved Tim deeply in her own way, and who was dying from ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy. Instead of finally being able to talk about his struggles, Tim found himself being tricked into gay conversation therapy. For the last few months of his mother's life, he went to be hypnotised by a 'Catholic psychologist' every week, until eventually she died, and Tim was set free to learn how live by and for himself. Further information The Truth Will Set You Free: Growing up gay in Opus Dei is published by Hachette. You can stream the Four Corners report into schools with ties to Opus Dei, which features Tim, on ABC iview. The Pared Foundation's full responses to questions from Four Corners can be read here. Opus Dei Australia provided Four Corners with this statement. Find out more about the Conversations Live National Tour on the ABC website.
The Irish Sun
24-06-2025
- The Irish Sun
‘I was 16 when given chain & whip to mortify myself' – Ireland AM guest details harrowing time under Opus Dei's control
AN IRELAND AM guest has lifted the lid on her "traumatising" years living under Opus Dei's control. The hit breakfast show was back on air this morning for another episode of chat with Advertisement 2 Anne Marie Allen opened up on life under Opus Dei's control 2 Anne Marie was just 16 when she tricked into joining the religious group Former Opus Dei member, Anne Marie Allen sat down with Muireann and Tommy to open up on her harrowing experience with the religious group. Opus Dei is a conservative Catholic institution which was founded by Saint Josemaría Escrivá in 1928. It now has a presence in over 60 countries and began in Ireland in 1947. It consists of lay members and clerical members. The organisation is controversial due to its secrecy and strict teachings. Advertisement READ MORE IN IRELAND AM Anne Marie had originally left home in 1979 to do a training course in cookery at an Opus Dei run catering school. But her dreams completing her course were short-lived when she ended up in a life of domestic serve under Opus Dei. Allen explained how she joined the religious group at the age of just 16, enduring six years of what was described as "torture and mortification". She said: "At 16 I was given a chain and a whip and I was told to mortify myself. It wasn't voluntary, there was no lead into it, no discernment. Advertisement Most read in News TV "I was told that the founder did it and that we had to do it for two hours a day and sometimes that was increased if they felt like you were struggling with your vocation." The brave woman told how it was a "form of self-harm that was approved by the organisation." Muireann asked if there was any way she could have left the course, but Allen responded: "I had given up everything to do the course, so I just thought I would see it out." Ireland AM guest recalls harrowing online harassment from tattle website Anne Marie recalled how, as part of the course they were assigned mentors to "help them with their studies". Advertisement She explained: "These mentors were members of Opus Dei and you were telling them personal things about yourself. "They were very friendly and nice and you felt you could open up about your teenage angst. "And they would say, 'Sure why don't you say a prayer, why don't you pray to the founder?'" Soon after, the idea of a vocation was introduced and Allen was asked to be the "assistant numerary" in Rome. Advertisement TOTALLY CONTROLLED Allen told how her entire life was controlled, revealing: "Our phone calls were listened to, our contact with the outside world was limited, our post was opened up. "Our life inside was to be invisible and live in silence and deliver this first class domestic service to Opus Dei." Catherine wrote on Instagram: "My goodness this is awful that poor young girl. Never heard of this." Advertisement Cathy added: "This was a horrific time in Ireland ." Joanne remarked: "My mind is blow, like what the f*** was going on?" And Bonnie exclaimed: "This is absolutely horrific."
