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Helen Garner

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Helen GarnerHelen Garner (born 1942) is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene – it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels, Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).

Throughout her career, Garner has written both fiction and non-fiction. She attracted controversy with her book The First Stone (1995) about a sexual-harassment scandal in a university college. She has also written for film and theatre, and has consistently won awards for her work, including the Walkley Award for a 1993 Time Magazine report. Adaptations of two of her works have appeared as feature films: her debut novel Monkey Grip and her true-crime book Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004) – the former released in 1982 and the latter in 2016.

 

'Why do I write?' | A survey compiled by Rosemary Sorensen

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April 1990, no. 119
'Why do I write?' | A survey compiled by Rosemary Sorensen

Would it surprise you to know that a number of our well-known writers write to please themselves? Probably not. If there’s no pleasure, or challenge, or stimulus, the outcome would probably not be worth the effort. If this effort is writing, it seems especially unlikely that someone would engage in the activity without enjoying the chance to be their own audience.

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La Mama: The story of a theatre by Liz Jones, Betty Burstall, and Helen Garner

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August 1988, no. 103

The most impressive building in the village of Tepoztlán, near Cuernavaca, is a huge sixteenth century Spanish monastery. But high up on the cliffs, when the mist rises, you can see – if you know where to look – a tiny Indian temple which everyone in the valley knows is where the gods really live.

La Mama is like that – to those who know it. But even the watchers on the bank know that theatre is built on a foundation of human sacrifice, so it is not surprising that La Mama should, on close inspection, turn out to be a regular little charnel house, a bloody altar on which all sorts of queer and callous rituals are performed in the hope of raising up the great gods Laughter and Applause. Apparently I sacrificed a wife and child there myself.

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Little Women

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June 1986, no. 81
'Little Women: Helen Garner, sold by weight' by Gina Mercer

The publishing world and other allied industries, namely the media and literary critics, tend to promote authors on a ‘star’ system. Especially women writers. They allow certain women to become ‘flavour of the month’. Recently, if you remember, it was Beverley Farmer, and then Kate Grenville. For a short period, every newspaper, magazine, or radio program with a literary bent featured them and their fiction. This treatment is reserved for fiction writers. Never is such sustained coverage given to that awesome creature, the ‘woman poet’.

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That Eye The Sky by Tim Winton

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February–March 1986, no. 78
Helen Garner reviews 'That Eye The Sky' by Tim Winton

This book is about a twelve-year-old boy called Ort Flack, into whose life, at a moment of drastic need, bursts none other than God, in the form of a silvery white cloud. The cloud has been there all along, hanging over the house, a personal vision of Ort’s, as mysterious and troubling and comforting to ...

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Lines Of Flight by Marion Campbell & Postcards from Surfers by Helen Garner

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December 1985–January 1986, no. 77
Sandra Moore reviews 'Lines Of Flight' by Marion Campbell and 'Postcards from Surfers' by Helen Garner

Marion Campbell’s first book is an ambitious work in which large themes are explored through the consciousness of a complex character, Rita Finnerty, a twenty-five-year-old Australian artist living in France. The writing is richly dense with images, symbolic clues, psychological insight poetic and painterly language, time layered with memory and even stories within the story.

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The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner

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February–March 1985, no. 68
Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews 'The Children’s Bach' by Helen Garner

The characters in Helen Garner’s new novella The Children’s Bach make up the kind of social molecule in at least one of which all of us feature as an atom.

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The First UQP Story Book by Craig Munro

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May 1981, no. 30
Helen Garner reviews 'The First UQP Story Book' by Craig Munro

The only woman in The First UQP Story Book is the naked one on the front cover. She is sitting in a kind of beanbag chair with her legs crossed and a floppy straw hat pulled down over her eyes. She is reading a book called The Possession of Amber which is by Nicholas Jose. Nicholas Jose is a man and so he was allowed to be actually in The First UQP Story Book.

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On Warwick H. Hartin, Nancy Keesing, and Helen Garner

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June 1978, no. 1

Divorce Dilemma is a book for those contemplating divorce, but it should be compulsory reading for those contemplating marriage! Warwick Hartin brings a wealth of research and practical experience to this clear and searching analysis of divorce and marriage in our society. He courageously examines the sacrosanct institution of marriage, our reasons for marrying, the divorce rate and the effect of divorce on children.

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