Product Description

Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted pupil, Lucien. Unnervingly, her lover's wife has just published Murder at Black Swan Point, a true crime novel about the brutal slaying of a young adulteress. When Lucien displays violent imagery in his crayon sketches, Kate wonders how well her pupil understands his mother's grisly work, and why he's exposed to it. Suspecting the adult account of Black Swan Point's murder to be wrong, Kate imagines her own version of the novel, for children, narrated by Australian animals. But has her obsession with the crime aligned her fate with that of the murdered adulteress? Chloe Hooper brilliantly portrays a young woman reluctant to enter or conform to the world of adults. Kate Byrne is compelled by the lives of her nine-year-old students, a misfit among their parents. And though Lucien's father brings her to life sexually in scenes of escalating eroticism, he does nothing to penetrate her obsession with the past. Kate is fixated on the crime of passion that occurred years earlier, less and less aware of her own reputation in the present.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #482439 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Australian debut novelist Chloe Hooper's A Child's Book of True Crime is the chillingly erotic account of a disturbed young woman's adulterous journey to her own sexually dark core. When vulnerable trainee teacher Kate Byrne embarks on an affair with her most gifted student's father, she exposes herself to nightmare visions of the repercussions of her sins--the themes of crime and punishment hang heavily over the narrative, which is set in the former penal colony of Tasmania. Kate grows to identify so much with Ellie Siddell, whose bizarre 1983 murder at Black Swan Point is the subject of her lover's wife's true crime novel, that she imagines the pair are trying to kill her, just as Margot Harvey and her veterinary husband, Ellie's boss and lover, were implicated in Ellie's vicious murder.

As anyone who has read the Brothers Grimm will testify, fairy tales are far from innocently penned ditties and the wolf lying in wait for Red Riding Hood can be interpreted in many ways. Hooper knows this and plays with it. The novel opens with Kitty Koala and Terence Tiger stumbling across the bloody crime scene and interspersed between the episodes with the animals' investigating Ellie's murder is a very adult tale of deceit and treachery.

In Stalinist Russia, blacklisted writers and artists had embedded secret messages in children's literature. Beautiful books were created, full of allegory, and the adults would read them before bedtime and remain fast asleep; disguised as the naïve, subversive content was unrecognisable. Children, hearing snoring, would gently take the books from their parents' hands. They'd ... tiptoe off to read the real story."

In Hooper's world, the children are all-seeing and the adults are the ones blinded by desire. Everything is subverted. Whilst the adults' sexual games take on a child-like quality with Kate playing the naughty schoolgirl to Thomas's stern chider, the children discuss evolution, the existence of God and Truth. Although Kate eventually uncovers the answers to Ellie's murder, the reader is left with more questions than answers to Kate's identity. Hooper, who has a mentor in Philip Roth, enchantingly layers her slender novel with many equally dark and illuminating levels, leaving the reader to chase breathlessly after her elusive truth. --Nicola Perry

Independent
‘Funny, edgy and sparky as sherbet, Hooper’s novel lingers in the mind with all the sweetness and menace of childhood itself’

Sunday Telegraph
‘It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper’s first novel…Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut’

Customer Reviews

Illicit affairs and murder at the bottom of the world.
Evoking a dark world of violence and doom from the outset, Hooper sets her debut novel in Tasmania, a remote former penal colony where the aborigine population was eliminated by genocide and prisoners were subjected to unspeakable cruelty. Mystery, deception, and betrayal are at the heart of three stories told simultaneously. A children's tale written by 4th grade teacher Kate Byrne uses animals to tell about a 1983 murder (hence, the title); a popular novel written by Veronica Marne, the wife of Kate's lover, Thomas Marne, describes the same murder; and the on-going triangle of Kate, Veronica, and Thomas provides the day-to-day action.

This is a lot to cover in 230 pages. In order to tell Kate's story and provide the background of her affair with Thomas Marne, Hooper must give many flashbacks while simultaneously revealing Kate's life in the classroom, her trysts with Thomas, and the perceived threats to her life. The suspense depends on the reader's seeing parallels between Kate's affair and that of the 1983 victim, Ellie Siddells, so Kate, as narrator, must also provide information about Ellie's background and her murder. The animal story is yet another level of abstraction which the reader must correlate with Kate's life.

Though the novel is filled with dazzling descriptions and some insightful observations about childhood, the novel ultimately ends up being talky, its three stories overwhelming its characters and obscuring its focus. The narrator, Kate, dictates and talks about the action, instead of bringing it to life, and the reader never really gets to know her. Plot and suspense are the novel's focus at the beginning, while Kate's (undeveloped) character and her coming of age are the focus at the end, a problem which makes the author's overall purpose unclear. The quality of the writing and some gorgeous descriptive paragraphs will take your breath away, however, and perhaps leave you as anxious as I am to see what Hooper does in her next novel. Mary Whipple

Illicit affairs and murder at the bottom of the world.
Evoking a dark world of violence and doom from the outset, Hooper sets her debut novel in Tasmania, a remote former penal colony where the aborigine population was eliminated by genocide and prisoners were subjected to unspeakable cruelty. Mystery, deception, and betrayal are at the heart of three stories told simultaneously. A children's tale written by 4th grade teacher Kate Byrne uses animals to tell about a 1983 murder (hence, the title); a popular novel written by Veronica Marne, the wife of Kate's lover, Thomas Marne, describes the same murder; and the on-going triangle of Kate, Veronica, and Thomas provides the day-to-day action.

This is a lot to cover in 230 pages. In order to tell Kate's story and provide the background of her affair with Thomas Marne, Hooper must give many flashbacks while simultaneously revealing Kate's life in the classroom, her trysts with Thomas, and the perceived threats to her life. The suspense depends on the reader's seeing parallels between Kate's affair and that of the 1983 victim, Ellie Siddells, so Kate, as narrator, must also provide information about Ellie's background and her murder. The animal story is yet another level of abstraction which the reader must correlate with Kate's life.

Though the novel is filled with dazzling descriptions and some insightful observations about childhood, the novel ultimately ends up being talky, its three stories overwhelming its characters and obscuring its focus. The narrator, Kate, dictates and talks about the action, instead of bringing it to life, and the reader never really gets to know her. Plot and suspense are the novel's focus at the beginning, while Kate's (undeveloped) character and her coming of age are the focus at the end, a problem which makes the author's overall purpose unclear. The quality of the writing and some gorgeous descriptive paragraphs will take your breath away, however, and perhaps leave you as anxious as I am to see what Hooper does in her next novel. Mary Whipple

Excellent crime novel
If like me you prefer a literary crime (The Secret History et al) then this will be just your cup of tea.

Though I thought this book was extremely well written and cleverly constructed, I did find the end rather a disappointment. Agreeably, this isn't a commercial whodunnit so I wasn't expecting a Scream-style ending but even so, the pace slowly meanders into an anti-climax as reality asserts. I realise this is the point as the novel is more an exploration of Kate's character and mental state but even so... I was left feeling disappointed. A 'reality' ending may be more convincing but I also felt it was rather lame. All the same, I did enjoy this book and I would still recommend it to everyone. It's highly original and thoughtful and worth reading, even if the end disappoints.