Cirrus@Austlit

'Helen Garner talks with Peter Craven about uncertainty, truth, guilt, justice and facing the music

'There’s something preposterous about Helen Garner being 75. The woman who became famous for Monkey Grip — the novel (was it?) about being with a junkie — and who a decade or so later produced that elegant novella The Children’s Bach, which compelled the admir­ation of Raymond Carver, has for the longest time been writing riveting nonfiction focused in practice on courtroom dramas and controversies. They range from The First Stone, about the Ormond­ College affair, in which a master was accused­ of abusing the girls; then to Joe Cinque’s Consol­ation, about the degree of responsibility a young woman might bear for killing her boyfriend; and more recently This House of Grief, about Robert Farquharson, found guilty of deliberately drowning his three children in his car.' (Introduction)