image of person or book cover 8133523548916058984.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Joe Cinque's Consolation single work   prose  
Issue Details: First known date: 2004... 2004 Joe Cinque's Consolation
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.' (Source: Pan Macmillan website)

Garner takes 'a deliberately subjective and "literary" approach' to her material with an 'emphasis on a sympatheitic authorial persona as the source of the reader's perspective' (Susan Lever 'The Crimes of the Past: Anna Funder's Stasiland and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation'. Paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference 2006).

Exhibitions

18388278
18387981

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Joe Cinque's Consolation : A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law Sotiris Dounoukos , Matt Rubinstein , ( dir. Sotiris Dounoukos ) Australia : Fandango Australia , 2016 Z1863568 2016 single work film/TV

'In early 1997, Anu Singh, a beautiful law student at the Australian National University, began to tell people she planned to kill herself. With doctors unable to help, Anu’s engineer boyfriend, Joe Cinque, attempts to get to the bottom of her condition. But as Anu’s mental and emotional state disintegrates, her plans grow more macabre and more public as she convinces fellow student Madhavi to help her. With Joe beginning to understand the true nature of their relationship, Anu starts talking of killing him as revenge for having made her ill. After an elaborate farewell dinner party attended by friends, Anu attempts to kill Joe but fails. She tries again and this time she succeeds, injecting Joe with a lethal dose of heroin. Nobody tried to stop her. ' (Production summary)

Notes

  • Epigraph:... to place, consider, deplore and mourn...(Gitta Sereny)
  • Epigraph: Suffering is not enough. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Pan Macmillan Australia , 2004 .
      image of person or book cover 8133523548916058984.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 328p.
      Description: ports.
      Reprinted: 2004
      Note/s:
      • Cover title: Joe Cinque's Consolation : A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law
      ISBN: 0330364979
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2006 .
      image of person or book cover 572776407136149981.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 328p.
      ISBN: 9780330421782, 0330421786
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2016 .
      image of person or book cover 7050565598652026805.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 348p.
      Edition info: Film Tie-in
      Note/s:
      • Published 27 September 2019
      ISBN: 9781925483574

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

Helen Garner’s House of Fiction Brigid Rooney , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel 2023; (p. 163-177)

'This chapter considers Helen Garners fiction, assessing the evolution of her work from the scandalous diary-like immediacy of the Monkey Grip (1977) through to her minimalist masterpiece The Children’s Bach (1984). Throughout, it considers the house as a core spatial configuration that changes across Garner’s work.' (Publication abstract)

Helen Garner, Robert Hughes and the Mystery of Nonfiction Peter Craven , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , December vol. 81 no. 4 2022; (p. 196-208)

'It's 45 years since Helen Garner published Monkey Grip and perhaps a while later that people realised how fine a writer she was. In 1997 there was that shock of recognition that someone had succeeded in re-creating inner-urban Melbourne, the 'aqua profunda' part of the Fitzroy pool, the tumult and tumbling from bed to bed of shared housing, the heartache of loving a junkie. The initial response to Monkey Grip was a response to a literary brave new world that was also the translation of something real. Indeed, there were critics such as the late Peter Pierce who said that Helen Garner had just talked dirty and called it realism. Yes, and along with this, there was the persistent accusation that she had simply published her diaries and served them up as fiction. This last point had come to seem like the most vulgar misprision by the time I wrote a full-dress defence of Garner in Judith Brett's Meanjin in the mid 1980s.' (Publication abstract)

What I’m Reading Elizabeth Flux , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018;
Being in the Archive : Affect and Scholarly Distance Bernadette Brennan , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Archives and Manuscripts , vol. 46 no. 1 2018; (p. 3-17)

'Working in the archives of living writers provides exciting possibilities for extended interpersonal research as well as ethical challenges. This article explores the author’s experience of working in Helen Garner’s restricted archives and negotiating the demands of scholarly objectivity with an increasingly felt empathic engagement. The author traces a chronological path through the archives relating to Garner’s three substantial works of non-fiction: The First Stone (1995), Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004) and This House of Grief (2014). She draws attention to some of the ways in which distance and objectivity can be influenced not only by contact with a living writer but also by the space in which the archive is encountered. With a deliberate focus on the lived experience of researching, rather than a scholarly examination of archival theory, the author offers a case study of how the interaction of archives and living subject can shape research and publication.'  (Publication abstract)

Truth on Trial Lou Heinrich , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings , January no. 24 2016; (p. 141-149)
'How recent Australian true-crime books have rejected male authority in court narratives and explored 'truth' through feelings.' (141)
Thanks for Takin' an Interest Evelyn Juers , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 263 2004; (p. 26-30)

— Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , 2004 single work prose
Touching the Void Morag Fraser , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 14 August 2004; (p. 5)

— Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , 2004 single work prose
What Was She Thinking? Helen Garner , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 August 2004; (p. 6)

— Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , 2004 single work prose
Murder She Wrote Diana Bagnall , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 17 August vol. 122 no. 6434 2004; (p. 64)

— Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , 2004 single work prose
Inside the Skin Emma-Kate Symons , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21-22 August 2004; (p. 11)

— Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , 2004 single work prose
Femme Fatale Susan Wyndham , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 17 July 2004; (p. 22)
Sorrow and Loss of a Sick, Sinister Tale Roderick Campbell , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 28 July 2004; (p. 13)
Death Both Bizarre and Intriguing Megan Doherty , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: Canberra Sunday Times , 1 August 2004; (p. 8-9)
A Novel Take on Facts and Salacious Detail Vivienne Wynter , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 10 August 2004; (p. 11)
Wynter looks at Joe Cinque's Consolation as an example of the growing genre of 'literary non-fiction or creative journalism'.
[Review] Joe Cinque's Consolation : A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law David Trembath , 2004 single work correspondence
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 7 August 2004; (p. 10)
Last amended 23 Oct 2019 14:21:22
X