RaveThe Monthly (AUS)...devastating, utterly compelling ... This tragic case is astutely observed by the most wise and expressive of writers ... The book also provides a fascinating insight into the legal process. Garner describes the awe and the adrenalin she felt when she entered the Supreme Court of Victoria, \'this house of grief\', and she sets the stage for the theatre that is a court case – wigs tilted forward, wigs tilted back, the tiny diamond stud in the lobe of the judge’s left ear. Her writing is almost painterly in these sections. The actors – the families of Cindy Gambino and Robert Farquharson, the journalists, the lawyers, the witnesses – all play a role like a Greek chorus, summing up at stages, raising questions that people outside the story are asking too. Helen Garner observes who looks at whom in the court and what their expressions tell us, and she is a master interpreter of body language, of gesture, of looks and of sighs.
