THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF

A stark account of the harrowing aftermath of a horrific crime.

In 2005, Robert Farquharson went to trial for causing the deaths of his three young children when he drove off a road in rural Australia, plunging his car, with the children strapped inside, into a dam. Novelist, screenwriter, and journalist Garner attended that trial—and retrial in 2010—and she creates a chilling, sometimes-numbing account of the courtroom proceedings; the evidence presented to the juries and the evidence withheld; the demeanors of the lawyers and judges; and the testimony of scores of witnesses, including medical and psychological experts, various police officers and emergency personnel, and the accused’s wife, friends, and co-workers. In the first trial, 40 witnesses testified for the Crown and five for the defense. The lawyers were a study in contrasts: Farquharson was defended by the verbose Peter Morrissey, “big, fair, and bluff,” who could cause jurors’ eyes to glaze over with his incessant examination of minutiae; the Crown’s representative was Jeremy Rapke, who swooped like a falcon “into the muck” of testimony to draw blood. Although not serving on the jury, Garner empathizes with their challenge: to weigh contradictory evidence, tease truth from lies, and test what they hear against what they believe. They learned that Farquharson’s marriage had ended, his wife was living with another man, and, Garner reports, “the general feeling was that a man like Farquharson could not tolerate the loss of control he experienced” because of both occurrences. Was he depressed and suicidal? Did he seek revenge against his wife? Or, as he adamantly maintained, had he blacked out because of a coughing fit and lost control of the car? Garner captures the breathless suspense during the wait for the jury to return; the blow of the decision and sentencing; and her own unsettled response to the shattering experience of contemplating an unthinkable crime.

A sensitive rendering of a legal drama.