Photograph: Rhys Smith/Newspix / Rex FeaturesĪfter Brendan Sokaluk was arrested, Hooper suspected there might be a much bigger story, and got in her car and drove from Melbourne to the Latrobe Valley to take a look around. If the wind had blown differently, she says, her house would have been in trouble. ‘The day felt apocalyptic’, says Hooper of the Black Saturday fires. “In the wake of those fires, it seemed incomprehensible … Who would become an arsonist?” Speaking to Guardian Australia at a cafe in Melbourne’s North Fitzroy (Hooper and her partner Don Watson left Woodend for the city after having children), Hooper says there’s one question at the heart of the book. Hooper’s account of the terrible crime that traumatised a community is even-handed and nuanced – so much so that, by the end of the book, it’s difficult to discern where her sympathies lie: victims or accused? But when the narrative switches back to the victims and the enormous distress and human toll the fires exacted, our allegiances switch. The Arsonist gives the reader reasons to feel compassion for Sokaluk – a bullied loner who was only diagnosed with autism after he’d been charged. Both are accounts of a marginalised community’s pain and outrage, and the legal system’s attempts to deliver some measure of justice. And just like her last nonfiction book, the much lauded Tall Man, Hooper gives a cool appraisal of a hot issue.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |