Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control - Author talk with Graeme and Elsie Johnstone

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control

What a pleasure it was to have Elsie and Graeme present with us on the difficult topic of coercive control on Saturday, 15 July, using their trilogy of books as a springboard for conversations. Graeme and Elsie Johnstone wrote three inter-connecting novels on this topic under the banner of ‘Lover, Husband, Father, Monster’, entitled ‘Her Story’, ‘His Story’ and ‘The Aftermath’. The works are best read in the order of 1 The woman’s perspective 2 The man’s perspective and 3 The views of those who it affected. 

When they were working on these books, Elsie and Graeme decided to write every time it rained and being Ireland, they wrote a ‘bloody lot’. Their task was to find out ‘What drives two men on either side of the planet to commit such awful acts, both in Australia and Ireland, and how have their marriages come to this?’

 

The novel is set in Dublin, and it focuses on the marriage of Jennifer, a legal graduate, and Stewart, a straight- laced insurance broker. Each book takes on different points of view of the characters in the novel: The woman, who is no pushover, and the man, who has only had one seemingly out of character violent incident when he was at school. They are in their 30’s and meet at a funeral of a mutual friend. They have 3 boys and several years later, a little girl. Stewart loved his children, but he was a hard taskmaster and wanted things done his way. 

 

Written ten years ago, the books detail what things changed, why they changed and how the control progressed. Experts have suggested that there are 7 types of coercive control: 1. financial /monetary control, 2. monitoring (keeping track of movements etc), 3. body control, 4. jealousy, 5. gas-lighting, 6. denying freedom and 7. isolation. On reflection, Elsie and Graeme realised they had addressed all these aspects in their novels.

 

For their presentation, they looked at the seven topics of coercive control and read out the relevant situations in their books which demonstrated these. When they did this, the subtlety and then substance of it was chilling. These things actually do happen gradually in some relationships. Something can be unreasonable for a long time before it becomes coercive. Some of this can happen to a lesser degree in otherwise healthy marriages and I was thinking “God, I’m sure we all have done some unreasonable things to each other to some slight degree, but not these extremes.” And I wondered sadly how things go from there to extremes, and prayed and reassured myself that we, that I, was better. I wonder if Stewart, the coercer in this situation, would think the same thing? We have the power to learn how to make our lives better and not be like that. Will we?

 

Thank you to all who attended for your insightful questions and comments. The books are available from the publisher through SmashWords.com at this link https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Graeme+and+elsie+johnstone

See below video for some excerpts of Graeme and Elsie's event edited together in a montage. Rather than show smaller amounts of all 7 forms of Coercive Control blended together for this video we included more of one so you could get a better idea of how it worked. The video goes for about 8 minutes 24 seconds once loaded.

Come along to our mid-winter Open Mic event on Saturday, 29 July, 2023 at Mentone Public Library. 

 

Date: Saturday 29 July 2023

Time: 11 am 

Cost $5

Bookings via trybooking: https://www.trybooking.com/CKDWU or at the event via card or cash.

You can also buy a ticket via Trybooking  via tihs QR Code also:

Email mentonepubliclibrary@gmail.com for enquiries.

Nathaniel Davies