{"id":368047,"date":"2025-11-10T00:48:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/368047\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T00:48:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:48:11","slug":"the-mushroom-tapes-review-erin-patterson-through-the-eyes-of-helen-garner-chloe-hooper-and-sarah-krasnostein-australian-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/368047\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mushroom Tapes review \u2013 Erin Patterson through the eyes of Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein | Australian books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every reader of The Mushroom Tapes will open the book knowing that Erin Patterson was found guilty in July of murdering three people \u2013 her in-laws, Gail and Don Patterson, and Gail\u2019s sister Heather Wilkinson \u2013 and of the attempted murder of Heather\u2019s husband, Ian Wilkinson. They will also know she was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 33 years, and is now appealing against her conviction<\/a>. Who among us hasn\u2019t been roped into speculation about this family tragedy, the carcass of which has been picked over by pundits, amateurs and experts for years now?<\/p>\n

Over 11 long weeks, the baroque details of the trial of Erin Patterson were made immediately available to a ravenous public \u2013 including sightings of Helen Garner<\/a>, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, three of Australia\u2019s most celebrated nonfiction writers, in the public seats of courtroom four in Morwell, Victoria. Were there several works of Australian literary nonfiction about Erin Patterson in the offing? A week after the guilty verdict was handed down, Text Publishing announced that the trio would collaborate on a book: The Mushroom Tapes.<\/p>\n

I approached this book with a fair dose of scepticism. Two major books on the trial have already been published, with more to come. Didn\u2019t the bereft families deserve some peace? And why the rush? Did this book really need to be written in time for the Christmas sales period?<\/p>\n

A similar mixture of compulsion and resistance afflicts the authors of The Mushroom Tapes: \u201cPeople say to us, you must be going. No, we answer. No. No. No.\u201d But they do go to Morwell. \u201cThe current of the story,\u201d they write, \u201chas a stronger pull than we had expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein appear in the book as Helen, Chloe and Sarah. Their collaboration was conceived as a podcast and much of the book is drawn from transcripts of conversations recorded while travelling between Morwell and Melbourne. They are often on the road but never able to stay in Morwell for long. The result is a work of oral literature that has been yoked to the page; conversations between friends, conversations between women. At one point, Garner says: \u201cIf anybody wants a mandarin or a biscuit, just kindly scream out and I\u2019ll pass it over.\u201d In a different book, such asides might have been edited out. Here they signal an interest in the ephemera of daily life, in the nourishment required to sustain conversations, friendships and families.<\/p>\n

In both their rhythm and register, these intimate conversations recall the forms that mediated Patterson\u2019s trial: podcasts, panel discussions, social media threads, group chats. We talk to make sense of the world \u2013 and everybody has something to say about Erin Patterson. \u201cPeople are obsessed,\u201d Hooper writes. \u201cI run into someone at my kids\u2019 sport, or the hairdresser, or wherever \u2013 they\u2019re either listening to two podcasts a day and know more detail about the trial than I do, or they\u2019re equally as strongly repulsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I\u2019m big-hearted or anything, it\u2019s just that I have this awful feeling \u2013 that could be me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Helen Garner<\/p>\n

And so we find ourselves in the car to Morwell with these three intelligent women as they try to figure out what is going on in the courtroom, and how the hell Erin Patterson got there. Marriage, class, sex, money, mushrooms, women and their lives \u2013 our lives.<\/p>\n

The transcripts have been carefully edited, but locutions that convey the immediacy of live commentary are retained: \u201cSarah, you\u2019re a lawyer, why has Erin decided to hold her trial in Morwell?\u201d Sometimes it\u2019s a bit too much like reading a podcast transcript. We stay in the present tense in the reported sections that break up the transcripts as well: \u201cShe sits in the dock at the back of the courtroom, flanked by two custody officers.\u201d It\u2019s as if the trial were playing on a non-stop loop. Two-podcast-a-day readers may relish the effect, but I found stasis, rather than suspense, in this unrelenting present tense.<\/p>\n

Fleeting disagreements between the authors are captured in the transcripts, and so is their equivocation:<\/p>\n

\n

Chloe: Are we really going to drive past Erin\u2019s house? I feel unsure about this.<\/p>\n

Sarah: For me, it\u2019s a normal part of doing research.<\/p>\n

Helen: We\u2019re not knocking on anyone\u2019s door, for God\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a lot of driving past significant sites in The Mushroom Tapes, and many such self-exonerating exchanges. The first line of Janet Malcolm\u2019s classic study<\/a> of crime journalism hangs over these conversations: \u201cEvery journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.\u201d The authors of The Mushroom Tapes certainly know this. Often it is Hooper who voices her qualms most strongly. At one point she says: \u201cThis trial is being used for public entertainment. I feel squeamish about joining the pile-on.\u201d And yet, here is the book.<\/p>\n

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The authors give the victims of the murders their due, and they write with great compassion about the unnamed children of Erin and Simon Patterson; \u201cthey\u2019ve been handed this bag of stones that they\u2019ll carry for the rest of their lives,\u201d says Krasnostein, one of the book\u2019s most memorable lines.<\/p>\n

It is Erin Patterson, however, who captivates them. Patterson bounces, says Krasnostein, \u201cbetween smallness and grandiosity\u201d; Hooper notes that she \u201cradiates discontent\u201d. In an early conversation, Garner says, \u201cIt\u2019s not that I\u2019m big-hearted or anything, it\u2019s just that I have this awful feeling \u2013 that could be me.\u201d It\u2019s quickly established that Patterson is not, in fact, much of a stranger at all; the authors write \u201cwe have discovered that the three of us are variously connected to Erin Patterson and the wider family\u201d. After taking in Patterson\u2019s time in the stand, Garner observes that \u201cthe gap between her and me shrank down really small\u201d.<\/p>\n

This combination of personalisation and projection is now omnipresent in the culture. It is why I found it ultimately difficult to extract The Mushroom Tapes, for all that it is extremely readable, from the rest of the chatter about the Patterson case. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein are an acute trio of conversational partners. Their precise, wry observations compel the reader\u2019s attention \u2013 but so did all the loud headlines and live-crosses that kept this calamity in public view.<\/p>\n

In its formal commitment to immediacy and intimacy, not to mention its speedy publication schedule, The Mushroom Tapes reflects the moment in which it was written. I wonder whether a collaboration that had been allowed to develop more slowly might finally have relinquished the present tense, and put this case in the past. As for whether this is the last word on the Patterson case, certainly not. A series of conversations across Australia with the authors of The Mushroom Tapes sold out well before the publication date of the book. The talk about Erin Patterson, it seems, is not likely to stop soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every reader of The Mushroom Tapes will open the book knowing that Erin Patterson was found guilty in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":368048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-368047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115522653832284073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}