Joe Cinque's Consolation
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5.0 • 8 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
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
Customer Reviews
Shockingly unjust Justice-System
What a shocking, riveting, page-turner ! A young law student becomes more and more disturbed and ends up murdering her boyfriend by sedating him with Rohypnol, then injecting him with heroin. She does it in the frame of two parties, but nobody believes she would ever do what she announces.
The book is then a very clear and thorough investigation of the whole trial/sentencing process, seen from all perspectives, but most the deceased parents’.
One fails to grasp that such a lenient sentence was given and is grateful that the story of this young man was at least now fully told.
Full admiration to Helen Garner, again -and praise for this book, that
I can wholeheartedly recommend.