A troubled teenager experiences rare moments of liberation when she learns how to tame a wild horse.

Ginger is a middle-aged recovering addict and artist. She has a complicated family history, especially her relationship with her sister, and never feels like she's belonged. She's recently married Paul, a college professor. She'd like to create a family, has seriously considered adoption, but manages to talk the reluctant Paul into a foster type arrangement. They take on 11-year-old Velvet, a Dominican girl from inner city Crown Heights in Brooklyn, who stays with them on a rather sporadic basis.

Velvet has quite a few challenges of her own. Her oppressed mother, Silvia, is abusive, sometimes physically. The neighbourhood she lives in is tough and the street kids often cruel. She's also been a victim of racist taunts, with comments that she should be deported. Boys are only too ready to sexually exploit her.

Ginger and Paul mean to do the best they can for Velvet, but there are barriers of race, class and language. Silvia speaks no English, but her stiff language and tone of voice say it all. She's clearly hostile to white do-gooder Ginger, who she thinks has adopted Velvet as some sort of pet.

The only bright spot in Velvet's life is the horse stable across the road from Ginger and Paul's house. It is there that the no nonsense trainer, Pat, introduces her to the mare, called “Fugly Girl”. She received this epithet due to her violent, uncooperative nature. The horse has been abused and hence its lack of trust in people. But Velvet takes a shine to Fugly Girl, renaming her Fiery Girl. She will form a bond with the mare and achieve a degree of personal liberation from her troubles.

Mary Gaitskill has chosen difficult and uncomfortable subject matter. The Mare is emotionally complex like no other book. A needy, middle class white woman uses a coloured poor girl as a surrogate daughter. While Ginger means well, she continually bumps up against depressing realities and eventually realises her dreams for Velvet are just that, the fantasies of a privileged white woman. Ginger crosses a line when she lies to Silvia about Velvet riding horses.

Narrated for the most part by Ginger and Velvet, with occasional appearances from Paul, Silvia and Velvet's brother, Dante, The Mare is an engrossing, emotional train wreck of a novel. Mary Gaitskill doesn't shy away from exploring awkward relationships and embarrassing personal failures. It's this honesty, coupled with the book's intimate narrative voices, that makes it a unique experience.  

The Mare, by Mary Gaitskill. Serpent's Tail. $19.99

Review by Chris Saliba

A cautionary tale about power unchecked.

From 1968 to 1995, Colin Manock was South Australia's chief forensic pathologist. During that time, he was there at every crime scene where an autopsy was required. His evidence helped secure some 400 criminal convictions. There was only one problem. A lot of his work as a pathologist was considered substandard. He was also lacking in qualifications, having no training in histopathology – the practice of taking tissue samples from various organs to discern more complex signs of disease or injury.

In 1968, Manock had seen an advertisement for the director of pathology at South Australia's institute of Medical and Veterinary Science. The institute was eager to fill the position, and with no other promising candidates, Manock was accepted, with the hope that he would undertake further training. He didn't. Manock's English accent (he emigrated from the UK), self-possession and refusal to concede mistakes meant his evidence was often accepted without demur. But as his work has come to be reviewed over the years, deficiencies have become obvious. In the handful of cases author Drew Rooke examines in A Witness of Fact, many have spent decades in prison due in large part to questionable forensic work. Some have had their convictions entirely overturned.

Drew Rooke has written a fascinating, easy-to-read biography of a strange, disturbing character. The middle sections concentrate on a number of cases and read like the best of true crime – enigmas to be solved. The book offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving too much power, unchecked, to one person. Clearly the work of forensic pathologists, as presented in A Witness of Fact, requires rigorous peer review before being used in courts of law. Once legal decisions have been made, lives can be ruined for decades. Or forever. Derek Bromley, who still protests his innocence of murder, has been behind bars for close to forty years. He could have walked free in the early 2000s if he'd admitted guilt, but maintains his innocence. He was convicted in large part on Manock's evidence, which has come under increasing scrutiny in the past two decades.

Public interest journalism mixed with compelling true crime cases.

A Witness of Fact: The Peculiar Case of Chief Forensic Pathologist Colin Manock, by Drew Rooke. Published by Scribe. $32.99

​Review by Chris Saliba