I read The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein due to the stellar lineup of authors, and I was not disappointed. I don’t read a lot of true crime and didn’t closely follow the case of Erin Patterson at the time it took place, so only had a peripheral knowledge of it. Patterson was facing three murder charges – the deaths of three family members by poisoned mushrooms in beef wellington. It was a case of life being stranger than fiction. The trial ran for eleven weeks.
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.
The Mushroom Tapes is primarily a series of transcripts from conversations between the three authors driving to and from the courthouse, in coffee shops, or at their hotel. Each writer reflects on the trial, the people involved in, and spectators of the proceedings. They also contemplate what motivates a woman to kill, whether Patterson did it, and question their own motivations for being there as they grapple with the ethics of it.
I’m thinking about the room we’re about to walk into. The sorrow it contains. Medea is an interesting comparison because, like this, it’s a horror story.
The book provides a different perspective to that shown through a media lens. It is their presence in the courtroom as ordinary observers of all those around them, and their observations of the mood up close. For me it was also an interesting insight into the minds of the three women writers and their relationships to one another.
Sometimes, as a writer, there’s a detail that you don’t know how to deal with … But if you can look at it the right way, it’s a portal into something deeper and bigger.
The Mushroom Tapes is a dialogue driven collaborative work of non-fiction for lovers of true crime and fans of the authors who penned the book (I am writing this while eating mushroom filo…eek!).
R L Smith 