Joan Mackenzie reviews Prima Facie by Suzie Miller

Hello I'm Joan and this book is called Prima Facie by Suzie Miller. I was recently lucky enough to attend a one-woman play of the same name here in Auckland and I know the play has been on in Sydney and the West End and Broadway. If you ever get the opportunity to see it don’t pass it up. This is the book of the play and it’s equally brilliant. It’s the story of Tessa who’s a very high powered high profile lawyer. She’s a criminal defence lawyer and during the course of her career she’s interviewed hundreds if not thousand of sexual complainants. She knows that she’s great in the courtroom she performs really well she knows how to hold the jury in the palm of her hand. She believes entirely in the rule of law and in the cause and goodness of the justice system. So imagine her surprise when one day she finds herself in the same position as so many of the young women she has interrogated in court over the years. She becomes the victim of a sexual assault and then she finds that the rule of law which she thought would sustain her and the judiciary in which she had great confidence and all the powers of the law would help her along and she finds out that being on that side of the fence is a very different thing indeed. The book is absolutely fabulous. So is the show and I highly recommend it. I think almost every woman who reads this will feel some resonance with it. But I actually think that everybody should read it.