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“Luckily, there are much faster ways to kill off your loved ones,” she continued, walking to her easel, where a selection of mushroom drawings was on display, “and mushrooms are an excellent place to start.” - Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, 2022.
Life, it is said, sometimes imitates art. And vice versa.
And so it might have seemed to curious bibliophiles as the so-called mushroom trial stretched on in Morwell over recent months.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.
As evidence piled upon evidence, and the defendant, Erin Pattison, kept chanting “incorrect” and “inaccurate”, a friend drew my attention to a novel entitled “Lessons in Chemistry”.
It was a publishing phenomenon when it hit the bookshops in 2022, a year before the Gippsland murders. It was Dymocks’ Book of the Year in Australia that year, and became the No.1 borrowed book (most in e-book form) from US libraries in 2023.
It became hot stuff in Australian libraries, too.
When detectives first began questioning Patterson about her mushroom-infused beef Wellington luncheon in July 2023 that killed three members of her estranged husband’s family, it was reported that Lessons in Chemistry had a months-long waiting list of 61 at Leongatha Library. Since then, the book clearly became a favourite purchase – numerous dog-eared copies can now be found in op-shops all around the Latrobe Valley, according to keen-eyed book-lovers.
Brie Larson as thwarted chemist Elizabeth Zott in Apple TV’s take on Lessons in Chemistry.Credit: Apple TV+
The book’s fictional protagonist is Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a TV cooking show host in 1960s California after being sacked as a chemist.
Zott tends to veer off-script when delivering her cooking lessons.
In Chapter 30, she tackles a recipe for getting rid of loved ones.
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“‘If it were me, I’d opt for the Amanita phalloides,’ she said, tapping one of the drawings, ‘also known as the death cap mushroom. Not only does its poison withstand high heat, making it a go-to ingredient for a benign-looking casserole, but it very much resembles its non-toxic cousin, the straw mushroom.’”
Zott finishes her fictional monologue with a useful defence for a home cook intent on poisoning her guests. “So if someone dies and there’s an inquiry, you can easily play the dumb housewife and plead mistaken mushroom identity.”
Patterson’s defence – that her fatal lunch was all a terrible accident – failed, as all the world knows now. A jury found her guilty this week of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.
Her trial revealed she was a dedicated reader. Police counted 450 books on the shelves of her home, and she testified that many more sat in boxes in her garage.
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No evidence was produced suggesting she had read Lessons in Chemistry.
A strange case of life imitating art, perhaps. Or vice versa.
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