Review: The First Stone
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsA circuitous, speculative essay about an infamous sexual harassment case at an Australian university. Garner, a novelist, essayist, screenwriter of films directed by Jane Campion and Gillian Armstrong, and occasional journalist for Time Australia, was drawn into her obsession with this case by a 1992 newspaper report: A woman law student filed an indecent assault complaint with local police against the master of Ormond College at Melbourne Univesity. The student alleged that the man had put his hand on her breast while they danced at an end-of-the-school-year social. Garner, a self-described ""feminist pushing fifty,"" impulsively writes to the accused academic, deploring that ""our ideals of so many years [should be] distorted into this ghastly punitiveness."" She seems surprised that these words come back to haunt her later attempts to probe the case as a journalist and effectively block her constructing a straightforward investigative account. Indeed, her unsuccessful efforts to arrange a single conversation with either of two women students who bring charges against the master is the slender thread on which she hangs her narrative. We follow Garner through a series of awkward interviews, from the hapless master (who is forced from his job, though Garner comes to believe he is innocent) to many others peripherally involved in the case. None of the informants speak to Garner on the record, and her own reliability as an observer is far from clear. She comes across as a self-absorbed woman who is admittedly overinvested in her identity as a rebel and a seeker during the '70s. The mother of a grown daughter, she remains both skeptical of men's ability to negotiate subtle sexual currents and vaguely contemptuous of young women in denial about the power of their own beauty and sexual magnetism. Though not without occasional insights about the inadequacies of the adversarial processes of law in resolving conflicts about sex and power, this is ultimately more frustrating than illuminating to read.
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Jodie Sinclair - GoodreadsVery well researched, certainly raised a lot of dinner party issues. Read full review
Review: The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex And Power
User Review - Kylie Matthews - GoodreadsI've just re-read this 15 years later... And funnily enough, I actually agree with Helen Garner far more now than after that first reading. While her feminist approach is of an earlier generation and ... Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Donnawaters - GoodreadsI read this a few years ago after hearing furious debate over this book. I loved it. It wasn't an easy or comfortable read but I felt that Helen Garner raised some very legitimate questions and a ... Read full review
Review: The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex And Power
User Review - Jenny Sharp - Goodreadsa lot to think about and still relevant after 20 years Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Alistair - GoodreadsBook of the year 1994 Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Sue - GoodreadsVery interesting reading; pity the girls never actually agreed to talk to her about their reasons for going to the police, but, I'm glad it didn't prevent her from writing the book anyway. Good on yer, Helen...another fabulous read! Thank you :) Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Jodi - GoodreadsIn my opinion Helen looked down on the girls and came across as anti feminist because a strong empowered woman does not behave like a tart and then complain about the consequences which appear to be ... Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Alison Petchell - GoodreadsRaw, honest, troubling, uncomfortable and confronting account of one man's life unravelling, two women's paths unfolding and the author's beliefs challenged Read full review
Review: The First Stone
User Review - Margherita - Goodreadsvery descriptive. feminism. quite realistic Read full review
