The Mushroom Treatment

GH on a publishing phenomenon

It is hard to miss The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, either singly, in the sickly green wrap that looks like it belongs around uncorrected proofs….

….or jointly, where it forms what from a distance resembles a garish hazard warning.

Behind the Readings window last week, I found it in front of me at the counter…

…to my left….

….and my right.

It could be the contents of a literary show bag, couldn’t it? Notice the adjacency of Garner’s new collected diaries, so deliciously moreish, and the cover of The Monthly, promoting an extract from what it has already pronounced ‘the non-fiction book of the year’. In one respect at least, this is already true: no book in 2025 has been accompanied by such uniformly lavish encomiums and fawning profiles.

So while understanding that a lot of criticism in Australia is a form of consensus-driven social positioning, I naturally had to buy a copy. What can I say? I like true crime; I respect the writers involved; the story exercised an undeniable campy allure, with death cap mushrooms in beef wellington the weapon of choice, even if the jury arrived at a conclusion seemingly foreordained by convicting Erin Patterson of poisoning her husband’s family. Alas, on the scale of the accumulated literary talent, The Mushroom Tapes feels like 2025’s greatest waste. The literary mountain has laboured and brought forth a true crime mouse.