“What’s worse? – living with suspicions and various possibilities and neve knowing the truth, or living with the truth of something too horrible to contemplate?”


When Helen Garner decides to faithfully follow the case of Rob Farquharson, -- an ordinary bloke, an unambitious “sook”, a hapless and bitter divorced husband, and an alleged murderer of his three young sons – she discovers that loss transcends a mere “guilty or innocent.”

She writes, “The only question they wanted to know was “Well? Did he do it? The last interesting question anyone could possibly ask.”

At its core, the case comes down to a simple question: did Farquharson suffer from cough syncope while driving – losing consciousness and driving his car, with his sons in the front and back seats into a watery grave? Or was this a heinous act of revenge against his wife, Cindy Gambino, who initiated the divorce and was now in love with another man?

The front-row intimacy of the trial – and the access to Garner’s private thoughts – provides the reader with a particularly chilling look into the twists and turns of a notorious Australian trial case. As the boundaries between journalist and participant begin to slip away, so does the reader’s own objectivity.

We want to believe very much that Farquharson – resplendent in his ordinariness – could never, ever, willfully kill his three sons, the youngest of whom is still feeding on breast milk. Evil deeds like that come from people who and psychopaths, and Farquharson presents himself as small, stumpy, and barely capable. And yet. And yet. The prosecutor’s depiction of him as angry, vengeful, and self-involved keeps becoming more real.

Ms. Gartner combines court dynamics, delicate legal points, flashbacks to an unbearably heartbreaking night, witness testimonies, and her own reactions together. The result is haunting and unforgettable, a true testimony to the power of literary journalism. I owe thanks to Pantheon Publishing and #NetGalley for enabling me to read this new edition of #ThisHouseofGrief.

One of the drawbacks to being a dedicated true crime reader is the acquired awareness that, regardless of the breadth of evidence presented to you, regardless of the many sad facts laid bare, there are just some moments in a person or a community's life which will always manage to evade a sense of justice, for which the ending (because do such moments ever really end?) will never satisfy, for which questions will always remain unanswered.

This case, as is so often true of crimes involving children, is one of those moments.

Helen Garner's THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF is creative/literary nonfiction at its finest, right up there with Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD in terms of style and tone. Honestly, I hesitate to call it "true crime"; a crime indeed occurs, but I'm not sure the crime or its particulars is actually the point. There's no whodunnit, no investigation. It's a case study in grief, misery, mental illness, and masculinity, encased in a courtroom drama. Garner chucks us in at trial level and presents us with only one set of divergent choices: either you believe that Robert Farquharson murdered his sons, or that he didn't. I can't say that I was especially persuaded by either side; if anything, the most convincing evidence for me was my own experience as a woman living in this world, which has granted me the knowledge that angry and rejected men often go to unthinkable lengths to hurt women who they believe have wronged them. Whatever happened in his car that Father's Day, Robert Farquharson is a pitiful creature.

Difficult book to read.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it