I'll read this book before I make any comments on it.

"In October 1977 a clever young law student at the Australian National University 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 Gardner followed the trials in the Australian Capital Territory 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."

This is a very powerful non-fiction book. Anu Singh is a real person and more about her and the murder of Joe Cinque can be found on the internet, via google.

I'll be starting a bookring for this book.

Please note: This book JUST qualifies for a 500gm post bag.



Participants
celestewa - received 17-11-05 - posted before Christmas
fushmush - posted ?
xoddam - received 12-1-06 - posted 16-3-06
bookfairy65 - received 21-3-06
lmn60 - received 8-4-06
jubby - received 4-5-06 - posted 15-5-06
Arrietty - received 22-5-06
OSTraveller - received 11-6-06 <--book is here




Back to pinkozcat

Posted to celestewa today. Enjoy :)

Thanks PinkOzCat, the book has arrived safely and next on my TBR pile for reading.

I "enjoyed" this book. It really highlights the difference between justice and the law and also how many peoples lives can be profoundly effected by one death.

She does an excellent job of portraying all the sides and feelings of everybody except the murderer who chose not to take part.

Will send this onto fushmush when I get her address.

Sorry guys, I received this a while ago and forgot to journal it. I have now read the novel.

What a deeply moving book! I can't stop thinking about this novel and I have discussed it with several people. I can't believe so many people knew about the plot and nobody stopped it. So many people were ultimately responsible for this poor man's death.

I thought the conversation with the Justice Crispin was quite interesting as well. That the length of the sentence also depends on how long it will take to rehabilite criminals rather than purely as a form of punishment. I can understand how the family would feel betrayed that the murderer of their son only spent 4 years in gaol.

I feel that an important lesson is to stand up for what you know is right. I wish someone would have, maybe this tragedy would not have happened.

Arrived this morning, many thanks, near to the bottom of the list, please forgive me if it's not read in 30 days. One day I will learn to stop signing up to bookrings :-/

A senseless death is always devastating. Sometimes it is possible to acknowledge that a great loss is accidental, but it seems the grief is greater and the anger harder to contain when there is someone to blame whose culpability is not recognised or not punished by authority. The author's sympathy is clearly with the victim's greiving, raging family, as anyone's would be.

Garner expresses admiration for Primo Levi, who wrote about the Holocaust in the only way one reasonably can write about such vast inhuman crimes, as a dispassionate witness rather than a wounded victim. But she makes no attempt whatever to remain dispassionate. She does refrain from taking a political position herself, but she reports sympathetically the stance of those who call for punitive sentencing and the return of the death penalty.

For my tastes this story was too much about the writer and her personal reactions. In her retelling of the two murder trials, we hear far more about Helen Garner's internal roller-coaster of sympathy, incredulity and indignation than we do of the actual drama of the proceedings of the court, the credibility of the witnesses, the brilliance or otherwise of the lawyers' arguments. Our narrator went in there *knowing* the two women were guilty, and slowly has to face the idea that the law does not agree.

In the end it is undeniable that the woman who killed Joe Cinque in cold blood had a history of possessiveness, 'histrionics', and delusion. As the judge says when interviewed years after the case, it was an unusually easily demonstrated example of diminished responsibility. No-one who knew her (except her parents, who repeatedly tried to get her psychiatric care but were too far away at the time to witness Joe's death) took her threat or intent to kill either herself or her lover seriously. Yet people around her, several of them witnesses in the trial, provided the means to make her threat of murder real, and when they saw indications that she was actually *doing* it before their eyes, they failed to take the danger seriously enough to save his life.

It was established in the trial that the killer's friend and co-accused Madhavi Rao did not have a 'duty of care' towards the murdered man. As they were not accused, the same must be said of the other people called as witnesses in the trials, though several of them might have been considered accessories before the fact. Yet this very judge had once claimed in a published book that you have a duty of care towards anyone who might reasonably be expected to be affected by your actions. The law does not agree with the judge's personal opinion, apparently, and a duty of care must be actively *assumed*. Merely witnessing a person in grave danger imposes no obligation to assist them, even if to do so entails no risk or expense to yourself. The judge *almost* calls for a reform of this aspect of the law, but doesn't quite go so far. Nor does Garner.

Everything in the book is about how people *feel*. Their grief, their rage, their demands, their regret. Garner *felt* an obligation to publish a book for the purpose of consoling Joe Cinque's mother, who *felt* devastated. She *felt* the need to tell the world what a fine young man had been taken out of it. She *felt* the need to point out how a ten-year sentence (with parole after four years) just isn't enough for stealing a life and breaking a family. But how does it feel to know you killed the man you loved, even if you aren't convicted of murder? How does it feel to know you stood by while your friend explained that she was going to kill an innocent man, then carried out her threat to the letter?

This book, like its predecessor The First Stone, suffers greatly from the absence of the testimony of the young women in the centre of the story. The author occasionally requested interviews with the accused, but did not press when each of them politely declined or put her off. It is hard not to come away from this book thinking that Helen Garner really didn't want to be distracted by looking these distasteful characters in the eye, who had avoided a jury trial (as is their right in the ACT) because (Garner assumes) their 'peers' would be so bold as to judge them according to type; after all she had as good as promised that the book would be a paean to Joe.

And so it is. A witness not to murder but to grief, not to justice but to indignation.

Garner barely concedes, though she publishes the judge's words, that the law is no longer a means of retributive punishment in this country. The purpose of prison is not to punish evil, but to minimise harm (though punishment, as a deterrent, is still seen as a means to this end). Garner does not go so far as to call for harsher sentencing, but it seems to me that that is where her sympathies, as well as those of Joe Cinque's friends and family, lie.

A kind of ceremonial reparative justice to the family of the victim by the family of the perpetrator is mentioned near the end of the book, with an example from 'tiny' (traditional, tribal, religious) Samoa. Garner wistfully longs for this expression of justice, but immediately dismisses its applicability to such a large, modern place as Australia.

It is my opinion that this is *exactly* how grief and the desire for revenge may best be assuaged, and that the purpose of harm minimisation can be served by exactly the kind of formal recognition of culpability practised in Samoa. This killer might (because of her diminished responsibility, not to mention her parole conditions requiring her to keep away from the victim's family -- which may be more for her own protection than theirs) be unable to show genuine remorse, but her family and the people who surrounded and supported her while she took her lover's life certainly *are* in a position to express their sorrow and offer reparation. It is a failing of the law that there is as yet no officially sanctioned forum for this to take place. It is a failing of the people involved that they did not seek to do it informally. And it is a failing of the book that it dismisses the possibility, instead of promoting it.

Nine out of ten for writing style, but only four out of ten for imagination and originality. This is a work of emotive journalism, a highbrow thesis-length version of a story that might have been shown on A Current Affair (was it?). Garner refuses to be dispassionate, but holds back from taking any meaningful stance. I expected better from such an accomplished writer.

I have bookfairy65's address and will post the book this afternoon.

This landed on my doorstep early this morning (Tuesday). I have one bookring ahead of it, but it won't take me long to get to it. Thanks to xoddam for sending this to me (and thanks for the postcard and teabags too!), and thanks to pinkozcat for sharing this book.

I have been wanting to read this book for quite some time. I live just 50km out of Canberra, so it was quite strange reading about places that I know so well. I actually moved to the area after Joe Cinque's murder, but nevertheless am still surprised that I hadn't heard about it until I heard of this book.

I have to agree with almost all xoddam has said, the story does seem a bit one-sided, but then again, I don't think I really wanted to hear Anu's or 'Mad Harveys' excuses either.

Thanks for the opportunity pinkozcat, I will PM lmn60 for her postal details and get this book out to her ASAP.

Received safely in my letterbox. I have a couple of books ahead of it, but will get to this one ASAP!

I found myself gripped, moved and angered by this book. Garner's examination of the events surrounding Joe Cinque's death, and the varying degrees of responsibility and pain felt by those affected by it, is an extraordinary work.

I can understand other readers' concerns with Garner's lack of objectivity, but this only increased this work's power, in my opinion. Helen Garner did not set out to write an objective investigation of the murder and trials and that is not what this book is about. It's about her own human reaction to a shocking event and the lack of responsibility and duty of care in those who assisted, either by commission or omission, in this crime. The fact that Singh and Rao did not choose to speak with Garner meant that she had little choice than to write about the events from her own perspective - without their input. (Just as a sidebar, I've read Singh's interview when the book was first published - what she doesn't acknowledge is that if she really does have borderline personality disorder (which I believe she does), you don't get 'better', it's built into one's wiring!)
If anything, I found Garner's lack of objectivity was what gave the book its power and insight. The philosophical questions of morality, responsibility and duty of care, grief, loss, pain and reparation would be less potent in a book that attempted to maintain impartiality - as, in the end, these weighty matters are ones that must also be answered with the heart as well as the brain.

Thanks so much for sharing this one, pinkozcat. I've PMd jubby for her address and will send it on as soon as I get it.

Received in the post today, thank you.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book - I couldn't put it down all weekend.

Yes, I know that sounds rather macabre, but with Helen Garner's beautiful writing style, and the way the case and details were unfolding, I just had to know more.

While I was reading, I kept thinking to myself what I wanted to write here. There were lines in the text that I thought, 'Now, I must jot that down' - but you know I didn't.

So, here I am wanting to say something deep and moving about the story, and I gasping like a fish out of water.

The passages on justice and re-education were challenging. We all have an idea of what natural justice is, and it is only (sadly) when people commit these crimes that we learn the difference between the judicial systems and moral codes.

This was a very moving and thought provoking book.

Thank you PinkOzCat for sharing this book with me.

RELEASE NOTES:

Posted off to Arrietty.

Yes, this book is travelling, and I am well and truly wishing that I had taken notes now.

The author mentions a book that she read years ago called something like 'Life after life'. It was a serious of interviews with sentanced killers.

I have decided that I would like buy a copy of this book - but can't remember the exact title or author.

Can you?

Please PM me if you can - and sorry for interrupting the 'journalling'.

Edit - I found it: Life After Life, Interviews with Twelve Murderers by TOny Parkers.

Would this book be the one you are looking for?

http://www.canadiancontent.ca/issues/1098books2.html


It is all that google came up withbut maybe my key words were not explicit enough.

Maybe Arrietty could check and see if there is a bibliography at the end where it is mentioned

Thanks - this came in mail yesterday. Am really looking forward to it. I have a friend who wants to read it, can I pass it on to her afterwards and try and persuade her to register?? That is if no one is desperate to read it after me. she's very reliable.

Tell her that she can only read it if she registers and gives you the brownie point for recommending book crossing to her.

Wow - what a fascinating story. I finished the book this morning and turned over the last page for a bibliography or some epilogue but there was nothing...nada...blank pages. Anyway I was going to write a journal now about it but I quickly read through other people's comments and I noticed that Xoddam has said nearly exactly what I wanted to say! Will have a think over weekend and write something original. Is it OK Pinkozcat if I give it to my friend to read as she has now registered on BC and I will make her write something up afterwards. Then she'll give it back to me and I can pass it on to someone else?

As you are on the end of the list it is fine to lend the book to a friend. Send me her BC name and I'll add it to the list and make it official.

I went to the internet for more information about the murder - some of the information made interesting reading.

Received this book from Arrietty yesterday as we were walking with friends around a sleepy country town, looking into antique shops and having a quiet pub lunch. It seemed strange discussing the book's gruesome contents in such a sweet setting.

I wanted to read this book but if I find the contents too horrible to contemplate, I might have to return it early.

This was a surprisingly good read. I was worried there would be too much gruesome detail but Garner writes with well and I became very interested in the trial.

Only a couple of criticism. Too much description of what people were wearing and I didn't agree with her descriptions of Canberra as a drug-infested city. I lived there for a while and while I'm sure there were plenty of drugs available, it certainly wasn't in evidence when you walked around the city even in the evening.

Thanks for letting me read the book. I will now return to Arrietty.

I realise I didn't finish journalling this book and there were a few more things I wanted to say.

Firstly, I think this book is more of a story about Helen Garner's journey into the world of criminal journalism rather than a story about a horrific crime and injustice, although that does come out through the journal. I found the story fascinating but the telling of it was long-winded and introspective. It told more about Garner's psyche and her reactions to the trial than the victims themselves. This was more about a process of the story rather than the story itself.

Nevertheless, or perhaps in spite of this, the book certainly had a raw honest feel to it. Garner WAS at the trial, she watched the defendent, the victim's family and reported what she saw and felt; with bias sometimes but that's how she wanted it to come across.

Secondly the story itself reminds me of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The latter was just a work of fiction but how close to the truth it got about the bright privileged students from top academic institutions, and how they perceive the world. The students in Joe Cinque's world were so self-absorbed, so much the centre of their own world,(basking in their superiority) that they failed to see reality when it hit them in the face. None of them wanted to examine if there was anything wicked or immoral or innapropriate in their behaviour.

I want to finish with this quote which got to me.

"The Supreme Court had finished at last with Joe Cinque. The public drama that had surrounded his death was over. There was nothing left to say. His parents would have to drive home now...hauling behind them the fact of their son's murder, unsatifisfied, unavenged. They would have to cram the huge foul beast into their house and cohabit with it for the rest of their lives".

Garner certainly manages to make the reader aware of a system which is shown to have huge flaws and while we continue to support and condone it, there will be no consolation for Joe Cinque or anyone else.

Returned home this morning, safe and well. Thanks to all who took part in the bookring and thank you, Arrietty, for the Adelaide Convention bookmark.

RELEASE NOTES:

On a raised garden bed in the plaza outside the shopping centre