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Helen Garner
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This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial Paperback – 20 August 2014

by Helen Garner (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 2,508 ratings
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Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.
On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father's Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner's obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict.
In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the courtroom with its actors and audience, all gathered for the purpose of bearing witness to the truth, players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the quest for justice.
This House of Grief is a heartbreaking and unputdownable book by one of Australia's most admired writers.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Text Publishing
  4. Publication date
    20 August 2014
  5. Dimensions
    15.88 x 2.54 x 24.13 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1922079200
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1922079206
  8. See all details
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About the Author

Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942, and has been writing and publishing since her first book, Monkey Grip, came out in 1977.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Text Publishing (20 August 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1922079200
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1922079206
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.88 x 2.54 x 24.13 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 2,508 ratings

About the author

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Helen Garner

Helen Garner

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Helen Garner was born in 1942 in Geelong, and was educated there and at Melbourne University. She taught in Victorian secondary schools until 1972, when she was dismissed for answering her students’ questions about sex, and had to start writing journalism for a living.

Her first novel, Monkey Grip, came out in 1977, won the 1978 National Book Council Award, and was adapted for film in 1981. Since then she has published novels, short stories, essays, and feature journalism. Her screenplay The Last Days of Chez Nous was filmed in 1990. Garner has won many prizes, among them a Walkley Award for her 1993 article about the murder of two-year-old Daniel Valerio. In 1995 she published The First Stone, a controversial account of a Melbourne University sexual harassment case. Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004) was a non-fiction study of two murder trials in Canberra.

In 2006 Helen Garner received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her most recent novel, The Spare Room (2008), won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction and the Barbara Jefferis Award, and has been translated into many languages.

Helen Garner lives in Melbourne.

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Top reviews from Australia

JudyG
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read of facts and without voyeurism.
Reviewed in Australia on 22 October 2014
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This book is a true story of a father whose actions resulted in the death of his children. He stated that he had a coughing fit while driving his car with his three sons in the car. His version of events is that the coughing fit caused him to run off the road and subsequently drive into a dam. His car became submerged and his children subsequently drowned. He was convicted of causing the death of his children at the first trial and convicted on appeal. This book was very well written and the descriptions of all the people involved in the trial were very realistic. In fact, when reading this book, I often felt that I was in the court room. This book is a great read, but it was not written in a voyeuristic manner, but very objectively. I was attracted to read this book because the trials aroused an enormous amount of publicity because the behaviour of the children's father was unusual.
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T. Teh
4.0 out of 5 stars Great observer of humanity
Reviewed in Australia on 8 January 2024
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Ms Garner is always a very good read. She is such a good observer of traits that ordinary folks display through often undulating landscapes that they traverse. This book has provided depths and new dimensions to accounts of this tragedy we read in the media at that time.
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Tracey Nicholson
5.0 out of 5 stars gut wrenching and brilliant
Reviewed in Australia on 2 September 2014
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Helen Garner captures the essence of tragedy in her recount of 3 little lives taken in what is eventually judged to be a cruel and selfish act. No matter whether you believe in the guilt or innocence of the defendant, you will believe that episodes such as this leave an indelible mark on those close to the action and those who are just looking on. Behind the headlines real people suffer, often in public and almost certainly in private. The atmosphere of dread, of loyalty, despair and loss mingle day after day in a courtroom where the ordinary and extraordinary people meet. Could not put this down....a fitting , if harrowing commentary on modern law and justice where the haunting death of 3 small boys matter and a result is relentlessly pursued to a Shakespearean conclusion.
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Patrick McCauley
3.0 out of 5 stars Misandry, Misogyny and Murder
Reviewed in Australia on 28 December 2014
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Helen Garner makes an art form out of misandry ( might as well say - misogyny - as all gender hatred is really pretty much the same thing) She seems to hate the male witnesses, hates the male police, and through studied disguises, treats the accused with contempt - though she reserves some respect for the male defence. The judge and the prosecuting attorney also seem to get off with a kind of forced neutrality. The women are, however all given humanity. It's hard not to read this book as part of the 'Gender Wars' Yet this is the most despicable of crimes and two juries found him guilty, so perhaps this is a man who should be despised and hated - or pitied. Garner gives little attention to the mother's flippant dismissal of the father - which set the madness on its tragic journey.
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Pet2
4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book enjoyed by a diverse range of book club readers.
Reviewed in Australia on 8 October 2015
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This gripping account of a tragedy that resulted in a lengthy legal process that endured for seven years is related by the masterful Helen Garner in a way that is compassionate to all involved in the drama that unfolded as she observed the proceedings in this house of grief. The tragic event is that a father of three young boys was driving the three boys back to his estranged wife when the car left the road and entered a dam. The boys drowned and the father escaped. Eventually the father is charged and his trial follows. Is a trial a search for truth or a place where persuasive evidence may be presented by the prosecution and defence with the judge and jury as the great arbiters of guilt? Helen Garner is the ever present clever and compassionate observer who wants to help us understand they human nature of the people involved in this awful event in this house of grief for we all share a common humanity. A wonderful book. I
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Dodie
5.0 out of 5 stars A true story of murder or an accident? Superbly told.
Reviewed in Australia on 23 December 2014
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I finished reading this beautifully written story just as Australia mourned the murder of 8 children allegedly by their mother/aunt. Reading the death of three young boys by their father one Father's Day was especially poignant. Helen Garner has written with tenderness and insight. Without trying to excuse any person's actions, she gives the readers some understanding of all the possible emotions felt by the main characters. The legal decisions, appeals ad further decisions was clearly set out to help the lay reader follow the case.
Most Australians were familiar with the horror of this family's situation. Ms Garner tell the story with her usual delicate touch.
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Ray
5.0 out of 5 stars A mesmerising account of a tragic event.
Reviewed in Australia on 19 October 2014
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I find Helen Garner's way of writing about this story brought an added dimension to it, as she spoke of the doubts that I also experienced whilst following this story & subsequent trials.

She also highlights our desire to hope of the best of our fellow human beings, because to accept that a man (in this particular case) could possibly do this two his three children somehow beggars belief: we don't WANT it to be true.

Sadly, it is.

A wonderfully rendered account, beautifully written & clearly heartfelt.

Thank you, Helen Garner.
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Maureen Tripp
4.0 out of 5 stars This House of Grief
Reviewed in Australia on 26 March 2016
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An interesting account of the trial, but I would have liked to hear more about the judge's address to the jury, and the reactions of the main characters in the second trial. I think there was too much of the authors feelings and thoughts and not enough of what was actually being said, but I am glad both juries found him guilty. Too many men seem to think it' s ok to kill their kids just to get back at their ex wives. The poor kids are the innocent ones, they deserve better. May the three boys rest in peace.
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Top reviews from other countries

S. Kinnevy
5.0 out of 5 stars completely absorbing
Reviewed in the United States on 18 December 2023
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What a wonderful writer, able to bring the grinding of the justice system to vivid life. Her meticulous observations along with her always fair but shifting alliances mirrored my own as I was swept away by the trial narrative.
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Liz
5.0 out of 5 stars gripping tale
Reviewed in Canada on 28 February 2015
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Really well told story. Garner keeps you wondering about intent to kill through all the details of the trial evidence. I was only one- third through the book but was already recommending it to friends.
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Cleopatra
5.0 out of 5 stars A murder trial in the spotlight
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 December 2015
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Telling the tale of a court case of Robert Farquharson, an Australian man on trial for killing his three sons. The undisputed facts are that the car that Robert Farquharson was driving ended up in the dam, the father escaped but the sons didn’t even make it out of the sunken vehicle. The truth of what happened that night, well that may never truly be known…

Helen Garner saw an item on the news and thought to herself that Father’s Day evening in 2005 and hoped that it was a tragic accident. When Robert was committed to trial she sat in the court room every day with a young gap-year student, listening and watching and this book is the result. Her quest to understand what happened and why is unwavering, yet without the prurient feel some true crime books have.

Do you think the story he told the police could be true – that he had a coughing fit and blacked out at the wheel? There is such a thing. It’s called cough syncope. The ex-wife swore at the committal hearing that he loved his boy’s. So? Since when has loving someone meant you would never want to kill them? She said it was a tragic accident – that he wouldn’t have hurt a hair on their heads.

Never before have I read about a murder trial in such detail, as Garner doesn’t just give us the facts, she recreates the court room with its moments of high drama and the low energy of the listeners to three days of evidence given by the police about tire tracks and tufts of grass. Although we don’t get descriptions of the jurors, for obvious reasons, everything is scrutinised, seemingly gently but missing nothing. Helen shares with us the ups and downs not only of the overarching trial but the mood of the jurors, the latest hot topic from the journalists, the sympathy she herself feels towards Cindy the boy’s mother but also towards Robert and his steadfast family. She puzzles at parts of the evidence, gives us the ‘everyman’ view from comments she overhears, she talks to Cindy’s parents, the man who runs the coffee stall, the gap-year student who has the certainty of the young We are given the smallest details that tell a lot about the mood in the court room, not just from the energy and passion of the defence and prosecution lawyers, but the drooping of a head, the fingering of a shirt collar and the stillness when significant evidence is given or refuted.

This is such a compelling read as Garner spends her time in court acting like one of the jurors, although she doesn’t bear their huge responsibility of listening to conflicting experts, possible mistakes that could be dismissed in any other arena, but in court are subjected to endless questioning that results in either point of view become entirely irrelevant. She feels for the men and women who are on the witness stand.

The repeated order ‘Just answer the question’ came to sound like a gag or a bridle. How crude, how primitive were the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the face of questions on which so much hung!

Garner is not a juror though, so she is also is able to include the evidence not presented to them, the evidence that is withdrawn on different grounds.

This book covers both the original trial and a later re-trial by which time feelings have solidified and those attending have aged. The book covers a total of over three months of court time which is condensed into roughly 300 pages of engaging prose, an absolute must read for those who want the inside knowledge of a court trial, in some ways far removed from that which we see on TV and in films but in others, just as you’d expect.

Never before have a read a non-fiction book that has so effectively transported me to a scene, like Garner herself, the days I spent reading this evocative, detailed yet accessible book, I pondered over the phrases used by the accused, I winced at the evidence given by the friend and I applauded the jurors for their tenacity.
14 people found this helpful
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David E Harkness
5.0 out of 5 stars Terrible sad story told well by Helen Garner
Reviewed in Germany on 8 October 2015
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For any parent what happened on that cold day is truly unbearable to think about. Helen Garner tells her narrative well whilst also beg humanistic and sensitive to the subject matter.
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The Wise Wol
4.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANTLY IMMERSIVE READ
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 May 2021
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This is in no way a whodunnit or a propulsive read of any kind. It is a very well-written immersive account of the essential unknowability of another human being. Ideally it should be read at one or two sittings. Taking as its subject the unimaginable act of killing (accident? murder?) and subjecting it to a detailed forensic and psychological analysis, Helen Garner produces a compelling account, resisting glib conclusions or ludicrous plot twists. It is both highly original and highly readable. I have deducted one star because there is a slight tendency to get bogged down in repetition of evidence. Don't let this put you off. Highly recommended.
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