Prima Facie by Suzie Miller: the true power of storytelling

Prima Facie – a legal term from Latin meaning “on the face of it” – was the title of Miller’s 2022 award-winning play in London starring Jodie Comer. The playwright has now adapted her work into novel form, an unusual creative enterprise but a meaningful one. The impact of the play has been incredible – not least in how it inspired changes in British law regarding how juries are directed to deliberate on rape cases.

The story centres on Tessa Ensler, a criminal defence barrister who has defended several men accused of sexual assault. Her perspective is dramatically altered when she experiences the court from the opposite side, after a date with a colleague goes horrifically wrong.

The novel, as was the play, is written as first-person testimony in the present tense, moving backwards and forwards in time. The voice of Tessa – a working-class woman from the north of England who has achieved incredible success in the upper echelons of the British legal system – is expertly drawn. Miller braids the legal technicalities and courtroom procedures with Tessa’s personal story authentically, with great control of tension and pace.

A reader interested in scratching the veneer of the polished public persona of barristers, and the power dynamics in the legal system, will be fascinated by what is revealed – a system where “you cannot trust your gut instincts, only your legal instincts” and where “there is no real truth, only legal truth”.

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Judges in Northern Ireland must now view a film of the production as part of their training, and barristers have formed Tessa (The Examination of Serious Sexual Assault) to change more laws to support victims. In Ireland, where less than 10 per cent of alleged rape cases were brought to court in 2022 and only 28 per cent of those heard led to a conviction, it would be fantastic if this book yielded similar results. All of this is to say that while this novel works as an engaging, thought-provoking narrative, it also proves the true power of storytelling and the arts as agents for change in society. We have never needed them more.