This Book of Grief - A Review of This House of Grief by Helen Garner

Once upon a time there was a family from a small town in outback Australia. The family was complete with a hard-working father, a loving mother and three beautiful little boys. Until they became broken. The mother wanted a divorce and the father left the house, taking only an old car and his personal belongings. You would hope that the story stops there. That the parents would start to live their own lives and feel happy and content once again. But that was not the case.

If you were wanting to read a book with a happy ending, with forgiveness and miracles, This House of Grief by Helen Garner is not for you. This is a book about loss, revenge and trial. This is a book about murder, accident and regret. This is a book about true Australian crime and interpretation.

 Image from Text Publishing, 2016. 

On the night that the three Farquharson boys’ lives ended, a family’s life was changed forever. Much was the same for Helen Garner. Garner sat through six weeks of gruelling trial in 2007, as well as an appeal and retrial in 2010, hoping to learn the truth about what really happened on that fateful night. While attending these trials, Garner accumulated evidence and stories to create the book that would be called This House of Grief.

Helen Garner has once again captured and described a courtroom trial that allowed the reader to visualise the hearing so vividly, that one could almost imagine they were a part of the devastation. Garner shows her audience the true people of the trial, from the accused, his estranged wife and their families, to the witnesses, lawyers and judges. Her writing pulls apart her thinking and shows how she does not take sides, as she goes backwards and forwards between thinking that the tragedy had to of been on purpose to how sorry she feels for the broken, defeated father.

Photograph by Nicholas Purcell Portraits. 

Garner has completed a piece of work that is at a high standard. So much so, that This House of Grief won the Ned Kelly Award for best true crime and has received outstanding reviews from the likes of The Times, the Herald Sun, Julian Barnes and Kate Atkinson. Her writing has been described as “gripping” and “heart-rending”, which any reader of the book could agree with; and even though at some stages the novel became unbearable to read, Garner was always a compassionate and considerate writer, proving to be a competent guide throughout the trial.

4/5 stars - an enthralling read.