The human cost: ‘The Mushroom Tapes’ by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
The subtitle of this book sums up the authors’ intent: Conversations on a Triple-Murder Trial.
It’s not a blow-by-blow of the whole trial, nor of the crime itself. That sort of true-crime writing is not really my cup of tea, nor is it the kind of approach that the three authors are, rightly, famous for.
Rather, it’s a collaborative exploration of their personal responses to what they see, hear and think during this very famous trial in Victoria’s Gippsland region in 2025.
Especially, it is an examination of the very significant toll on those involved: the human side of the headlines, the speculation, the theories. The crime is only the first part of a process that affects every individual who is somehow connected to a trial like this.
I probably would not have been inclined to read this book, except that the three women who wrote it are authors whose previous works I have admired. They tackle their subjects with respect, humility and a very honest vulnerability. These qualities are reflected in this, a collection of conversations they had together while driving and from to the small town where the trial was held, and in between hearing days.
The result is not a forensic examination of the evidence, or the legal arguments, so much as how all of this made them feel – about the accused, about the victims, about the residents of a little country town that will be forever changed. The legal teams, the journalists covering the trial. The families of the dead.
They debate long and hard about their reasons for wanting to attend and write about this particular trial. Are they, in the end, like those who see it as an opportunity to make a quick buck from a book, podcast or film? Are they just curious sticky-beaks wanting a vicarious glimpse into unimaginable trauma? They share their thoughts about those reasons; here is part of their answer:
Helen: Basically what we’re doing is bearing witness…We’re bearing witness to a rent in the social fabric and how the law is going to deal with it.
Sarah: You can do two things with [evidence in a trial]. You can digest it into content that people come to ogle out of shadenfreude, or you can say ‘Oh God, I know that feeling…I know what shame is, and I know what rage is,and I know what it is to be islolated and desperate.’
ebook pp 23-24 of 249Of course mushrooms feature throughout, death cap mushrooms being the medium by which the killer delivered the poison to her victims. The authors muse on the ways in which mushrooms could be seen as metaphors: for indications of personality, relationships, intent. This book also had me thinking about fungi in general and its place in our environment.
I love the way these women write, and I loved ‘hearing’ their voices throughout this book: unadorned, unedited, honest.
The Mushroom Tapes is unlike any ‘true-crime’ book I’ve come across previously. In their exploration of this particular trial and the crime that brought it about, the authors have much to say about us all.The Mushroom Tapes was published by Text Publishing in 2025
Another Australian ‘living literary treasure’: Helen Garner and her book ‘Everywhere I Look’
I’m late to this book (published by Text Publishing in 2016) but I’m an avowed Helen Garner fan, especially her non-fiction, which Everywhere I Look is: a collection of short anecdotes, musings, essays, film and book reviews, and a catalogue of everyday incidents in the life of an author who has made observing and recording a daily habit. In the hands of someone as skilled as this, the everyday become poetic, luminous, full of beauty, humour and mystery.
These were qualities of other books I’ve read by Garner: Joe Cinque’s Consolation, This House of Grief, The Spare Room, and of course the classic Monkey Grip, among others. How does she do this – write about the ordinary and the extraordinary in ways that make both seem familiar or, at least, understandable?
The second-last piece in this book, titled ‘The Insults of Age’, should be a must-read for any woman approaching mid to later life (and their partners, family and friends.) Her warning to thoughtless (younger) folk who might presume to act towards older women as if they are invisible, stupid, deaf or helpless, is one of several paragraphs that made me chuckle.
There were, as well, moments when I gasped in recognition of the situation described and at the beauty and simplicity of the prose, such as in the piece describing her mother and their relationship. ‘Dreams of Her Real Self’ also made me weep a little. There is this:
When, in the street, I see a mother walking with her grown-up daughter, I can hardly bear to witness the mother’s pride, the softening of her face, her incredulous joy at being granted her daughter’s company; and the iron discipline she imposes on herself, to muffle and conceal this joy.
Everywhere I Look, p94And these sentences, describing a photo of Helen as a baby in her mother’s arms, which capture the other side of the parent-child relationship:
I am six months old. I am still an only child. She is carrying me in her arms. She is strong enough to bear my weight with ease. I trust her. She is my mother, and I am content to rest my head upon her breast.
Everywhere I Look p105There it is – the entirety of the complicated bond between parent and child in a handful of understated or pared-back sentences. Who could say more, or more beautifully?
A wonderful offering from a living literary treasure.
