Joe Cinque's Consolation

Helen Garner

Nov 2007 · Picador Australia

About this eBook

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

A true story of death, grief and the law from the 2019 winner of the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests-most of them university students-had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder.

Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.

It is a masterwork from one of Australia's greatest writers.

Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime 2005
Winner of the ABIA Book of the Year 2004

PRAISE FOR JOE CINQUE'S CONSOLATION

"Garner's book is a writer's profound response to a tragedy and to questions about human responsibility over time as well as at precise moments" The Age

"This is a work of great passion and of countervailing humanity - a book of witness..." Australian Book Review

Ratings and reviews

I don't know what I expected from this book. The first few chapters were hard to read and the parallels drawn between Anu and women, seemed to place her firmly as a stereotypical jealous girlfriend. It lacks insight into her character but it is compensated by others perspectives of Anu. By the end, I really appreciate that the book was trying to draw attention back to Joe. I think it wasn't perfectly executed but well grounded in reality.

Biased, emotive and tiring. Repetitive and poor structure. It felt like it was a journalistic set of incomplete notes turned into a book

Interesting read. Sad that the law protects the criminal. Where is the justice. Wicked self absorbed female who ruined so many lives by one selfish cruel act

About the author

Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has been publishing novels, short stories, non-fiction and journalism since 1977 when her first novel, Monkey Grip, appeared. Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart and The Feel of Steel. She lives in Melbourne.