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The Mushroom Tapes

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What to expect

In July 2023, in a quiet Australian country town, Erin Patterson - stay-at-home mother and true crime devotee - invited her husband's devoutly Christian family to lunch. Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms.

Two years later, Patterson stood trial, accused of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The court case gripped the nation and fascinated people all over the world.

Among those drawn into the drama were three renowned Australian writers: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. Together, they joined the daily media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts and spent long days immersed in the case's sinister and complex themes: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other - a uniquely enlightening study of Erin Patterson and our collective obsession with her strange and terrible crime.

Critics Review

Extremely readable . . . Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein are an acute trio of conversational partners. Their precise, wry observations compel the reader's attention
Guardian
A riveting true-crime conversation
Irish Times
This is an utterly weird book which captures the fog and confusion of the world it enters, almost as a lark. It is brilliantly organised and the representation of the miasma of the trial is at such variance with so much we have imagined. Pick up this book and you'll find it hard to put down. It will be read around the world as a credible account of one of the strangest cases ever to come before a court.
The Australian
An utterly absorbing exploration of how these writers think: questioning, rationalising and reflecting on female criminality, morality and the ethics of storytelling
Books+Publishing
I was utterly captivated . . . A dense and deeply engaging weaving of voices, narratives and ideas. A most enticing aspect of reading this book is the opportunity to eavesdrop on three highly intelligent and capable writers
The Conversation
In both their rhythm and register, these intimate conversations recall the forms that mediated Patterson's trial: podcasts, panel discussions, social media threads, group chats
Guardian
Allows us to imagine what the mealtime conversations many of us have been having about this case would be like if three of Australia's best writers were guests. It's a comfort meal with some exotic ingredients mixed in
Inside Story
Sensitive and insightful
Age
The Mushroom Tapes is clearly a hybrid, with pace and staying power: it benefits from the immediacy the recordings lend and the way the three authors bounce off each other, but has none of the excess detail that can bog down even the best-written account of some cases.
FINANCIAL TIMES
For what is ostensibly a true crime analysis (and, let me reassure you, if you're in the market for one, it is that, and a fascinating one), it is also much more in the way that only the very best true crime can be... So many moments that triggered and flickered, sparking synapses in my brain. So many observations that I'm sure will resonate with you. On witch hunts, on why so many women love true crime (hands up), on being an outsider and the need to belong, on female aggression and why society is so scared of it, on the stories we tell ourselves about how life is meant to be, how we cling to them, on marriage as an institution, why one person breaks and another doesn't
Sam Baker
Insightful, humane and self-questioning
The Times

User Reviews

Book 4.0
Narration 5.0
Author Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein
Narrator Andrew Watson, Caroline Craig, Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein
Duration 4 hours and 54 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781399639613
Format Audiobook
Publisher Orion
Genre Mycology, fungi, True crime, True crime: serial killers and murderers
Availability GB, IE
Rating
4.0 (1 review)
Narration
5.0 (1 review)

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