Prima Facie (Suzie Miller, Picador)

Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s debut novel (adapted from her internationally award-winning 2019 play of the same name), is a relentless, arresting story of a criminal defence barrister whose passionate faith in the legal system is uprooted when, as a sexual assault survivor, she experiences it from the other side. Despite Tessa Ensler’s working-class background, she has forged a successful law career in a climate of often snobbish competition and made a name for herself through hard work rather than family wealth or privilege. The breathless energy and driving intensity of Miller’s play translates into a novel of punchy, sometimes fragmented prose tracing Tessa’s heartrending transition from the confident, slick professional who initiates us into the thrills and skills of her courtroom life to a traumatised (yet still strong) woman whose internal monologue becomes a barrage of self-criticism and doubts. Miller effortlessly and powerfully steers us back and forth in time—before, during and after the rape—and we see the inside of the courtroom as Tessa does, from both the bar table and witness box. The novel is intimate in every sense—narratively, sexually, emotionally and dramatically—and portrays Tessa’s shifting beliefs about the law and its capacity to enact real justice, from a raw, first-person perspective. Despite being somewhat peripheral, her relationships with her family and closest friends are drawn with compelling warmth and truth, offering a redemptive balance to the novel’s more harrowing aspects. Like the play, the book grabs you forcefully from the opening words, refusing to release you until the final pages.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a freelance editor and writer, and a bookseller at the Hobart Bookshop. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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Category: Reviews