Helen FitzGerald


Helen FitzGerald is an Australian novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel, Dead Lovely, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2007, and The Exit in 2015 by Faber & Faber. Viral was released in 2016.

Background

She was raised in the country town of Kilmore, Victoria; the twelfth in a family of thirteen children. She studied English and History at the University of Melbourne, before later attending Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work. She began writing while working as a criminal justice social worker, where for a period she worked with serious sex offenders in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison. She quit this job for a time to focus solely on her writing career, before returning to the field part-time. She cites her experience as a social worker an inspiration in the subject matter of her writing.

Writing

FitzGerald began as a screenwriter, writing scripts for a series of educational children's dramas for BBC Scotland. However, she became frustrated with the industry when none of her subsequent screenplays were produced, and she turned to novel-writing. She states that the rules of screenwriting are very stringent, but that in having learned them she has improved as a writer.
Her books are mostly thrillers, though she herself has described her genre as "Domestic Noir", a term coined by her fellow author Julia Crouch.

Works

FitzGerald has written sixteen novels to date:
  • ', published 2007
  • ', published 2009
  • ', published 2009
  • ', published 2009
  • ', published 2010
  • ', published 2011
  • ', published 2011
  • ', published 2012
  • ', published 2013
  • ', published 2013, The Cry was adapted as a BBC serial starring Jenna Colman and Ewen Leslie.
  • ', published 2015
  • ', published 2016
  • Worst Case Scenario, 2019
  • Ash Mountain, 2021
  • Keep Her Sweet, 2022
  • , published 2023

    Critical reaction

A few critics noted that FitzGerald's first book, while generally described as a crime novel, did not follow the traditional rules of the genre. They argued that it belonged to a different, more psychologically complex tradition, characterised by the dark humour and flawed anti-heroines of writers such as Tama Janowitz and Fay Weldon.
The Cry has received the widest critical acclaim of any of FitzGerald's novels to date, with Fitzgerald's friend Doug Johnstone from The Independent on Sunday stating: "Astonishingly good. It is utterly harrowing, completely plausible, constantly nerve-shredding... It plays on the deepest, darkest fears of all parents about their children, and embeds that everyday terror in a plot so up-to-the-minute that you'll swear it's been lifted from the pages of a newspaper... The Cry is a remarkable novel – its devastating power all the stronger for its realistic rendering. Brilliant stuff."

Nominations

FitzGerald has been nominated for several awards, including: