The Poison Principle

Author:
Gail Bell

Publisher: Picador

Price:
$21.00

Available Now

Poison Pen

Gail Bell has chosen deceased members of her family as the subject of her first novel, and there are troubled branches in her family tree. There are quack doctors, hidden passions arsenic, mystery, two deaths and lashings of shame; all providing fertile ground for her gentle search for historical truth. Did her Grandfather, William Macbeth, murder two of his sons?

Bell trained as a pharmacist and has written extensively about medicine and poison in the past and interwoven with this family history exploration is a detailed analysis of the available poisons of the centuries and how they make the body malfunction in horrific ways. The book teems with historical references to poisoning deaths that it be would be useful to be able to access easily, and it is unfortunate the book is not referenced or indexed.

George Bernard Shaw wrote an essay eighty years ago lamenting the passing of poisoning of a method of murder. For him it was the murder of passion requiring planning, dedication, and determination to carry it out. It has faded in popularity due to the advances of science and particularly forensics. In the week I read The Poison Principle I read an article in the New Yorker which lamented that autopsies were only occurring in ten percent of deaths these days so reluctant are families to violate the body and so confident are doctors in their diagnoses. I spoke to Gail Bell about this shift, as I was wondering to if poison could possible make a come back given this gap. She said it was quite possible, that the progression of poison can often mimic a disease, particularly if that have a wasting disease, they could actually conceivably reacting to expelling a poison from there body. >>>

Image - Untitled, Bobby West Tjupurrula
What George Bernard Shaw may have been lamenting was the dying of poisoning as a literary subject. Snow White, Anthony and Cleopatra and Emma Bovary our literary traditons have provided us with powerful archetypes of the poisoned. In our conversation Gail Bell said that poisoning has well and truly had its hey day. Poisoning murders are slow, well plotted and often based in long held bitterness and killing has become more random and quick. Gail said she was also chasing down the idea that in our literature and dreams poisoning was a feminine crime:

It is the dark side of the mother archetype, characterised by a betrayal of trust when someone who you are meant to instinctively trust to nurture you feeds you poisons. If a man poisons however he will be portrayed as effeminate and cold blooded.

Ultimately the emotional power of this book lies with the mystery of murder in Gail Bell's own family. It is a brave decision to expose your real self in a novel, and something Gail said she had to be persuaded to place this narrative in the foreground of the story.

I did not have an ending to the story for some time. The events of the William Macbeths's life made the news quite a bit at the time, but most of the main players had passed on. When I put together the fate of the sons I decided to reveal the journey

Telling family history means getting permission from those that are still alive and Gail said this involved some long painful, tearful, conversations. The pain of that journey for Gail has made this novel go beyond a mere description of a quaint way of killing people to giving us a new fable of Australian death and redemption.

Shank

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