This House of Grief

The 2005 crash in which Robert Farquharson's car left the road and plunged into a dam in rural Victoria, Australia, killing his three sons, lies behind Helen Garner's book, subtitled the story of a murder trial, whose subject is his trial and conviction for their murder. That verdict was set aside on appeal, and a retrial ended in a second guilty verdict. Garner was reported to have been in court throughout the seven years it took to settle the case, and took part each year in workshops held by the Judicial College of Victoria. Its epigraph, from a novel by the Hungarian poet Dezső Kosztolányi, is addressed to the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Dua Lipa described how Garner brings readers into the real trial through days of evidence, weeks of testimony and years of appeals, and called the result a sharp, forensic study of human nature rather than a simple courtroom drama.