Overview

In July 2023, in a quiet Australian country town, Erin Patterson - stay-at-home mother and true crime devotee - invited her husband's devoutly Christian family to lunch. Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms. Two years later, Patterson stood trial, accused of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The court case gripped the nation and fascinated people all over the world. Among those drawn into the drama were three renowned Australian writers: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. Together, they joined the daily media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts and spent long days immersed in the case's sinister and complex themes: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder. The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other - a uniquely enlightening study of Erin Patterson and our collective obsession with her strange and terrible crime.

Full Product Details

9781399639576

Table of Contents

Reviews

An utterly absorbing exploration of how these writers think: questioning, rationalising and reflecting on female criminality, morality and the ethics of storytelling * Books+Publishing * I was utterly captivated . . . A dense and deeply engaging weaving of voices, narratives and ideas. A most enticing aspect of reading this book is the opportunity to eavesdrop on three highly intelligent and capable writers * The Conversation * This is an utterly weird book which captures the fog and confusion of the world it enters, almost as a lark. It is brilliantly organised and the representation of the miasma of the trial is at such variance with so much we have imagined. Pick up this book and you'll find it hard to put down. It will be read around the world as a credible account of one of the strangest cases ever to come before a court. -- Peter Craven * The Australian * In both their rhythm and register, these intimate conversations recall the forms that mediated Patterson's trial: podcasts, panel discussions, social media threads, group chats -- Catriona Menzies-Pike * Guardian * Allows us to imagine what the mealtime conversations many of us have been having about this case would be like if three of Australia's best writers were guests. It's a comfort meal with some exotic ingredients mixed in * Inside Story * Sensitive and insightful * Age *

An utterly absorbing exploration of how these writers think: questioning, rationalising and reflecting on female criminality, morality and the ethics of storytelling * Books+Publishing *

Author Information

Helen Garner is widely recognised as one of Australia's greatest writers. She is the winner of the 2006 inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction, the 2019 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the 2023 Australian Society of Authors Medal. Her books include This House of Grief, Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach and How To End A Story: Collected Diaries. Chloe Hooper is an Australian author acclaimed for her compelling narratives in both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of A Child's Book of True Crime, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Literature, The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island, The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire and Bedtime Story. Sarah Krasnostein is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, Not Waving, Drowning, and On Peter Carey. She has won the Victorian Prize for Literature and other major nonfiction awards and been shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to practice law in New York and Victoria.

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