The First Stone

The ivy-covered exterior of Ormond College.

Garner had been a student at the University of Melbourne in the 1960s, was familiar with its environment and had read about the case in the Melbourne newspaper The Age. Immediately struck by what Garner perceived to be a "punitive" and "priggish" response to the incident by the complainants, and her own ties to feminism, she called her female friends to discuss their angles. Garner's friends' agreement with her own positioning–that by seeking punitive punishment and enforcement of the law to what she saw as a "hapless social blunder"–ignited the desire to delve deeper into the case and publish a book as a response to the incident. The trajectory of the book shows the development of Garner's stance: she initially, as the book begins, had intentions to interview the two women to gain more "complex sense" of the allegations, as well as to understand why the girls went to the police.[6] Their initial reluctance to talk to Garner, which eventually turns into flat-out refusal after a sympathetic letter to The Master written by Garner is circulated throughout the university and in Melbourne publications, drives her stance to be less objective and cements her views of the women as the book progresses. By the book's conclusion, Garner had tried a number of times to contact the women, their legal representatives and intermediaries, and friends to no avail. She interviewed Alan Gregory, the accused, in his office. Later she visits the family home to speak to Gregory's wife, who discussed the damage the accusations had done to their family. Garner accessed transcripts, media publications, and had ties to women who knew the complainants, as well as employing her own experiences as "evidence" (a device that was of particular scrutiny from the books critics). She concludes the book by highlighting the difference between real sexual violence and assault towards women, compared to what she perceived as a mostly trivial, boorish incident at Ormond. Furthermore, she discusses feminism in general, the power balances between the accused and the women, who she refers to as "powerful anima figures",[7] but speculated that they were also unaware, or unwilling, to exert their power to the Master on the night of the event, in favour of seeking a more law-based approach later on.

The First Stone was controversial for a number of reasons. As the students involved refused to be interviewed by Helen Garner, the point of view of the accused master of the college was instead used in isolation and the narrator was therefore criticised as being biased towards his point of view. Elements of the story became fictionalised–for example, the tutor who advised the students was split into nine separate characters giving the appearance of a "feminist conspiracy" at work. She also failed to mention that Gregory is alleged to have assaulted 5 women, three of whom dropped their complaints. Additionally, the book was also criticised for its view that feminism had become weakened and claim that the appropriate response to being groped was "a slap in the face" rather than a police complaint.[10][11][12][13][14]

Writing for The New Yorker, writer Janet Malcolm gave a mixed review of The First Stone. She called the book's narrative "remarkable", but also "vertiginously turbulent", and went onto criticise the approach Garner took towards the young women. In her review, Malcolm references a quote from the book, in which Garner fantasises about a "less destructive response" to the incident in which she confronts the Master, and tells him "this time I'm prepared to let it pass". Malcolm wrote that "this is not good enough. This is closing ranks with the abuser. Sexual harassment isn't sexual abuse–exactly. It lies on the border between a crime and a mistake. [But] it is a minor offence with major associations".[15]

In The New York Times, Tamar Lewin wrote: "The feminist debate over the politics of victimization has raged in this country [the US] for years; Ms. Garner's book brings Australian feminists squarely into the fray", though she lamented on Garner's personal investigation adding very little to the facts of the incident.[2]

James Wood, also writing for The New Yorker, wrote in a 2016 article that The First Stone "still seems a brilliantly prescient book – in its complexity, in the tense torque of its self-argument, and in its very vulnerability and stunned intolerance".[16]