This House of Grief

Description

‘HER WORDS, AND THE BOYS’ FATE, WILL HAUNT US LONG AFTER WE’VE TURNED THE LAST PAGE’ – THE GUARDIAN

Critically-acclaimed true crime from the author of The First Stone (Picador, 2007), The Spare Room (Canongate, 2008) and Cosmo Cosmolino (Text, 2013, also available from Turnaround).

On the evening of September 4th 2005, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, all drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? In a tale reminiscent of In Cold Blood (1966), Helen Garner decided to reveal every aspect of this complicated and highly emotional case.

The case became Garner’s obsession; she followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict was delivered, and attended every day of the trial (and subsequent retrial). She was there alongside countless journalists and family members – exposing with great compassion the emotional complexity of a case that gripped the nation.

In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man with a broken life – she presents the courtroom as a theatre with its actors and audience, all gathered for the purpose of bearing witness to an often uncomfortable truth.