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Diaries #1
Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I 1978–1986
Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard.
Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.
Yellow Notebook, Diaries Volume One, in this elegant hardback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.
‘Garner is scrupulous, painstaking, and detailed, with sharp eyes and ears. She is everywhere at once, watching and listening, a recording angel at life’s secular apocalypses…her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive.’ James Wood, New Yorker
‘On the page, Garner is uncommonly fierce, though this usually has the effect on me of making her seem all the more likable. I relish her fractious, contrarian streak – she wears it as a chef would a bloody apron – even as I worry about what it would be like to have to face it down.’ Guardian
‘[Garner’s] writing expresses a hard-won grace. It brings you closer to the world, and shows you how to love it.’ Monthly
272 pages, Hardcover
First published November 5, 2019
177 people are currently reading
1637 people want to read
About the author
Helen Garner
51 books1,377 followersHelen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has published many works of fiction including Monkey Grip, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Children's Bach. Her fiction has won numerous awards. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993.
Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
Praise for Helen Garner's work
'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin
'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion...her radar-sure humour.'
Washington Post
'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'
Peter Craven, Australian
'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.'
Ed Campion, Bulletin
Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
Praise for Helen Garner's work
'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin
'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion...her radar-sure humour.'
Washington Post
'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'
Peter Craven, Australian
'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.'
Ed Campion, Bulletin
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
November 29, 2025
Garner’s release of the third and final volume of her diaries has prompted me to return and read ‘Yellow Notebook’ for the third time in as many years. My original review below holds true but this work only grows in stature with each revisit. A remarkable achievement - rich and raw, achingly honest, with each page a revelation of discovery that almost takes one’s breath away.
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Poignant, raw, deeply thought-provoking and occasionally joyous, these beautiful entries reaffirm Garner as an indomitable, unflinchingly honest, vulnerable human who also happens to be Australia’s greatest writer. Layer upon layer of wonderful prose, diverse quotations that demonstrate the breadth of her reading, tiny snapshots of acute observation and the myriad of detail that makes savouring her work such a joy - ‘Yellow Notebook’ offers essential insight for both writers and readers on literary crafting and approach.
____________________________
Poignant, raw, deeply thought-provoking and occasionally joyous, these beautiful entries reaffirm Garner as an indomitable, unflinchingly honest, vulnerable human who also happens to be Australia’s greatest writer. Layer upon layer of wonderful prose, diverse quotations that demonstrate the breadth of her reading, tiny snapshots of acute observation and the myriad of detail that makes savouring her work such a joy - ‘Yellow Notebook’ offers essential insight for both writers and readers on literary crafting and approach.
Want to read
February 16, 2020I have not read this book yet. I will read it over my summer holiday; well that is the plan. The following are some lines by Helen as I listened to her speak at the City Recital Hall at a Sydney Writer's Festival event I attended a short while back. This woman is becoming my writing guru. It can't get better than this.
As with every piece of writing that’s got any value, there’s a sort of line there’s a thread of muscle that runs through it and this is something that if you teach writing, or if you edit other people’s work and your own of course. But that’s another matter. That’s what you’re doing. What an editor is doing. Is taking off everything that’s obscuring that muscle, that line that runs through a piece of writing. And that’s why people talk about over writing, I mean people who over write, they don’t trust their sense of muscle in their own writing. They think ooh I’ve got to put in some frilly bits here, and I’ll have to put in a few limbs and veins and things like that, but later you strip that off and if it’s any good there’s that muscle running through it. So, so basically I suppose I was taking out everything that didn’t look or feel like muscle. Um, but of course that image breaks down when you talk about fragments cause the book consists of fragments. I’m going to get lost in the kind of anatomical imagery here if I push that any further!
As with every piece of writing that’s got any value, there’s a sort of line there’s a thread of muscle that runs through it and this is something that if you teach writing, or if you edit other people’s work and your own of course. But that’s another matter. That’s what you’re doing. What an editor is doing. Is taking off everything that’s obscuring that muscle, that line that runs through a piece of writing. And that’s why people talk about over writing, I mean people who over write, they don’t trust their sense of muscle in their own writing. They think ooh I’ve got to put in some frilly bits here, and I’ll have to put in a few limbs and veins and things like that, but later you strip that off and if it’s any good there’s that muscle running through it. So, so basically I suppose I was taking out everything that didn’t look or feel like muscle. Um, but of course that image breaks down when you talk about fragments cause the book consists of fragments. I’m going to get lost in the kind of anatomical imagery here if I push that any further!
November 4, 2019
Helen Garner for breakfast, lunch and dinner. These diaries offer unparallelled access and intimate insight to the mind of this great writer and I ate it all up. Garner has featured in my dreams while I read this and she is very much in my head which has been a joy. Talk about aqua profonda!
May 8, 2022
Compared to a lot of literary diarists, Helen Garner is wonderfully relatable:
These extracts from her journals in the 70s and 80s are joyous, life-affirming, inspiring and hugely comforting. I was very much in the mood for them after so enjoying the notebooks sections of Chatwin's The Songlines, and here the presentation is very similar: everything bare, pruned back to the essence, so that we read her thoughts only a line or two at a time, a paragraph at most.
Clearly these have been trimmed down from much more detailed journals, and they often start in medias res (‘Within two minutes I was sobbing and F was out of the room. I wanted to punch my hand through the window…’), but the effect is not that they feel limited or censored. Rather, Garner's editing feels supremely generous, giving us just these crystalline glimpses without having to wade through any ponderous scene-setting. It's all killer, no filler.
Through these sparse entries, the story of her life – with a daughter and a second husband and a cast of various friends, lovers and colleagues – emerges only in your peripheral vision as you're focusing on the other stuff – her little descriptions, dreams, arguments, and thoughts on her own writing.
Sometimes she boils stuff down to principles:
She's very good at capturing thumbnail sketches of people. Seeing Jessye Norman in concert walking to the piano, Garner writes, ‘She strolled, like the mountain coming to Mahomet…’ And then every now and then she'll break out with some exclamation:
Her own second marriage sounds like it was often a tempestuous affair, with (we infer) mistrust and infidelities on both sides, and plenty of arguments in the middle. Many of these are likely to strike a chord:
Later, when she is having a fling with a married man and thinking of him excitedly as she does her shopping, we suddenly get:
Really I could keep quoting bits that I've underlined for ages and ages, because I found almost every page of these diaries to be full of insights and full, also, of reassurances that we're all involved in the same messy, joyful and distressing process of living. Reading them is a pleasure but it's also an act of something like social communion. Anyone looking through these journals is likely to have moments of muttering, ‘Get your shit together, Helen,’ but I also can't imagine anyone coming out of them not wanting to give her a huge hug.
I want to read Freud's Civilization and its Discontents but I'm too stoned.
These extracts from her journals in the 70s and 80s are joyous, life-affirming, inspiring and hugely comforting. I was very much in the mood for them after so enjoying the notebooks sections of Chatwin's The Songlines, and here the presentation is very similar: everything bare, pruned back to the essence, so that we read her thoughts only a line or two at a time, a paragraph at most.
Clearly these have been trimmed down from much more detailed journals, and they often start in medias res (‘Within two minutes I was sobbing and F was out of the room. I wanted to punch my hand through the window…’), but the effect is not that they feel limited or censored. Rather, Garner's editing feels supremely generous, giving us just these crystalline glimpses without having to wade through any ponderous scene-setting. It's all killer, no filler.
Through these sparse entries, the story of her life – with a daughter and a second husband and a cast of various friends, lovers and colleagues – emerges only in your peripheral vision as you're focusing on the other stuff – her little descriptions, dreams, arguments, and thoughts on her own writing.
wishing…I had a real job with people I didn't particularly like, so I wouldn't have to produce my own raison d'être every day, like a spider yanking thread out of its own guts, or wherever the hell they pull it from.
Sometimes she boils stuff down to principles:
Sentimentality keeps looking over its shoulder to see how you're taking it. Emotion doesn't give a shit whether anyone's looking or not.
She's very good at capturing thumbnail sketches of people. Seeing Jessye Norman in concert walking to the piano, Garner writes, ‘She strolled, like the mountain coming to Mahomet…’ And then every now and then she'll break out with some exclamation:
I like men. I just like them. (But not Norman Mailer.)
Her own second marriage sounds like it was often a tempestuous affair, with (we infer) mistrust and infidelities on both sides, and plenty of arguments in the middle. Many of these are likely to strike a chord:
We fought about housework. I saw red and smashed a plate and a bowl.
‘There are more plates here. Why don't you break them as well?’
‘Shut your face.’
He went upstairs and turned the TV on full blast. I swept up the mess. I bawled a lot as I swept, and then as I washed my plain, spotty, forty-year-old face and looked at it in the mirror and thought that I couldn't bear having to go through with another bout of this BATTLING, I also thought, I am about to get my period. It absolutely shits me that this should explain anything. I objectively do most of the housework and it's NOT FAIR.
Later, when she is having a fling with a married man and thinking of him excitedly as she does her shopping, we suddenly get:
I use as buckets of cold water thoughts of his wife's preparations for Christmas.
Really I could keep quoting bits that I've underlined for ages and ages, because I found almost every page of these diaries to be full of insights and full, also, of reassurances that we're all involved in the same messy, joyful and distressing process of living. Reading them is a pleasure but it's also an act of something like social communion. Anyone looking through these journals is likely to have moments of muttering, ‘Get your shit together, Helen,’ but I also can't imagine anyone coming out of them not wanting to give her a huge hug.
Read
December 22, 2024This made me want to try some of Garner's fiction.
December 30, 2019
I am entirely biased as I love all things Helen Garner. I can't imagine why someone would want to adopt a critical stance and thereby miss out on the experience of fully immersing themselves in her exquisite observations of life and people. This book is made up of her diary entries from 1978 - 1987 and comprises her observations of self, others, interactions, memory, nature, romantic love, mother-daughter love, murder, the law, music, the pain of criticism, grief, dogs, other writers, friendships, spirituality and more. I'm left with my usual sad-empty feeling when there is no more Garner to read.
September 8, 2024
4/5
The short connected and disconnected jottings of 8 years of Garner's life have some of the best descriptive and self-analytic passages I've read. This yellow book makes me enthusiastic to write.
The short connected and disconnected jottings of 8 years of Garner's life have some of the best descriptive and self-analytic passages I've read. This yellow book makes me enthusiastic to write.
February 22, 2023
A diary can be hit or miss, depending on the writer but also the day. Things happen in Helen Garner's life, but I needed to look outside the diary at times to see what had been going on. There are no notes, there's no index, the entries are restricted to years instead of months or days (sometimes seasons are indicated), people are identified by letters like M and F (her daughter and one of her husbands, as becomes clear the further one reads into the book) without a key, and when her own books come out sometimes one has to work out when they appeared.
Garner has an ear for overhearing others. She often catches people (familiar and strangers) as they say something revealing, as in this entry from 1983 (p.82):
Two men listen to Strauss's Four Last Songs.
'I hate sleep,' said one. 'Sleep is death.'
'That,' said the other, 'has something to do with why your marriage broke up.'
On writing , in 1986 (p.218):
I'm supposed to send a story to an anthology. I haven't written a word. I was in that intolerable state of having cleared the decks and finding how far inside me all the real obstacles are. But this morning an hour's work. Two typed pages and the tremulous sense of having hit a vein--that sensation of recognition--as if it were all formal, I mean as if all one were seeking was form, and the rest came after.
There are many remarks about writing and writers (she includes complimentary and harsh remarks she makes about the writing of others and comments others make about her work), about feeling sad or unattractive, about divorce and friendship, about movies and music and art generally, about motherhood and the daughter she loves. Much else besides. All worth reading, as one never knows what will come up or be reported.
Garner has an ear for overhearing others. She often catches people (familiar and strangers) as they say something revealing, as in this entry from 1983 (p.82):
Two men listen to Strauss's Four Last Songs.
'I hate sleep,' said one. 'Sleep is death.'
'That,' said the other, 'has something to do with why your marriage broke up.'
On writing , in 1986 (p.218):
I'm supposed to send a story to an anthology. I haven't written a word. I was in that intolerable state of having cleared the decks and finding how far inside me all the real obstacles are. But this morning an hour's work. Two typed pages and the tremulous sense of having hit a vein--that sensation of recognition--as if it were all formal, I mean as if all one were seeking was form, and the rest came after.
There are many remarks about writing and writers (she includes complimentary and harsh remarks she makes about the writing of others and comments others make about her work), about feeling sad or unattractive, about divorce and friendship, about movies and music and art generally, about motherhood and the daughter she loves. Much else besides. All worth reading, as one never knows what will come up or be reported.
January 17, 2020
Yellow Notebook confirms Helen Garner as this country's most astute chronicler of life, in all its messy mundanity and pain and glory. I dog-eared every other page until my copy resembled a PhD student's thesis subject.
November 4, 2025
Helen Garner'ın yıllara yayılan günlüklerinin ciltli baskısını görünce heyecanlanmış, Türkçe'de ne zaman yayımlanacağını merak etmiştim. Sanırım -neredeyse- eş zamanlı olarak dilimizde de yayımlandı. Üç ayrı kitap şeklinde okurla buluşacak olan serinin ilk kitabı Garner'ın 1978-1987 yılları arasında yazdığı notları içeriyor. Helen Garner benim severek takip ettiğim yazarlardan biri. Bir cinayet davasını anlatan Bu Yas Yuvası, kurgu dışı bir kitap olsa da içlerinde benim en sevdiğim kitabı sanırım.
Sarı Defter'e gelecek olursam aslında az önce söylediğim gibi bunlar dokuz yıl boyunca Helen Garner'ın tuttuğu kısa kısa notları içeriyor. Kimi zaman gününü, kimi zaman eşiyle yaşadığı kalp kırıklığını, büyüyen kızını kimi zaman da rüyalarını anlatıyor. İnsanda Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing okuma isteğinin yanı sıra düzenli not tutma arzusu yaratan, ilham dolu bir kitap bu. Acele etmeden, günlere yaya yaya, birinin eski bir defterini bulup karıştırmanın verdiği o tuhaf his ve hazla okudum. İkinci ve üçüncü cildi de keyifle okuyacağımdan çok eminim, o nedenle heyecanla çıkmalarını bekliyorum.
Bir de kendisi acaba hâlâ not tutuyor mu, Dua Lipa'nın kitap kulübüne konuk olduktan sonra defterine onunla ilgili neler yazdı diye düşünmeden edemedim. :) Çünkü bu kitapta ya da diğer bir deyişle buradaki notlarında diğer yazarların tatlı gıybetleri de bulunuyor :) Günlük okumaktam hoşlanıyorsanız, benim gibi bir Helen Garner okuruysanız mutlaka edinmeniz gereken bir kitap diye düşünüyorum.
Son olarak Elif Ersavcı müthiş bir çeviriye imza atmış. Bu denli kişisel cümleleri dilimize böylesine akıcı, şiirselliğini koruyarak çevirmeyi başardığı için kendisine tebrikler ve elbette kocaman teşekkürler.
Sarı Defter'e gelecek olursam aslında az önce söylediğim gibi bunlar dokuz yıl boyunca Helen Garner'ın tuttuğu kısa kısa notları içeriyor. Kimi zaman gününü, kimi zaman eşiyle yaşadığı kalp kırıklığını, büyüyen kızını kimi zaman da rüyalarını anlatıyor. İnsanda Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing okuma isteğinin yanı sıra düzenli not tutma arzusu yaratan, ilham dolu bir kitap bu. Acele etmeden, günlere yaya yaya, birinin eski bir defterini bulup karıştırmanın verdiği o tuhaf his ve hazla okudum. İkinci ve üçüncü cildi de keyifle okuyacağımdan çok eminim, o nedenle heyecanla çıkmalarını bekliyorum.
Bir de kendisi acaba hâlâ not tutuyor mu, Dua Lipa'nın kitap kulübüne konuk olduktan sonra defterine onunla ilgili neler yazdı diye düşünmeden edemedim. :) Çünkü bu kitapta ya da diğer bir deyişle buradaki notlarında diğer yazarların tatlı gıybetleri de bulunuyor :) Günlük okumaktam hoşlanıyorsanız, benim gibi bir Helen Garner okuruysanız mutlaka edinmeniz gereken bir kitap diye düşünüyorum.
Son olarak Elif Ersavcı müthiş bir çeviriye imza atmış. Bu denli kişisel cümleleri dilimize böylesine akıcı, şiirselliğini koruyarak çevirmeyi başardığı için kendisine tebrikler ve elbette kocaman teşekkürler.
March 19, 2025
Finished H’s diaries as Annandale woke up around me, Parramatta Road rapidly emerging from its temporary slumber. Will I ever write like H? Or move through the world like her? She seems at every moment completely open to life unfolding around her, but not in a way that blunts her critical edge. I eagerly await the second volume; perhaps by its terminus I too will have started a diary, although I suspect that the life of a government lawyer may be less noteworthy than that of a writer.
October 13, 2020
This book is really 6 out of 5! Incredible! It felt elevating reading it. Made me want to write a much better journal than the flippant one I have. More importantly, reading it made me want to reach for the stars in every way - in how I observe things then to write about them, and in how just to imbibe the everyday life, to NOTICE. In how to 'do' conversations, listen to music, swim even. And, I kept thinking, in deep identification, as I read the book: So Garner, too, had to clean food off her kitchen cupboard doors ALL THE TIME! :)
Read
July 28, 2020The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Yellow Notebook
‘[Garner’s] writing expresses a hard-won grace. It brings you closer to the world, and shows you how to love it.’
Monthly
‘[Garner] experiences the consequences of her writing so acutely, and that is what makes her so extraordinary—you can read the suffering in every word’
Annabel Crabb
'There is so much wisdom in this book that we can be grateful that Garner has decided to share it around.’
Michael McGirr, Age
‘Garner is unparalleled in her honesty and perceptiveness…Experience the things she read, the things she did, they ways she felt, and so much more in this immersive thoughtscape. A delight.’
Booktopia
‘As intriguing as it is deeply humbling.'
Adelaide Review
‘For fans of Garner’s keen eye, ear for dialogue and shining snapshot moments, this is a must.’
Canberra Times
'In some ways, the diaries are the apotheosis of her entire career, and the most exciting thing she has ever published.'
Literary Hub
‘[Garner’s] writing expresses a hard-won grace. It brings you closer to the world, and shows you how to love it.’
Monthly
‘[Garner] experiences the consequences of her writing so acutely, and that is what makes her so extraordinary—you can read the suffering in every word’
Annabel Crabb
'There is so much wisdom in this book that we can be grateful that Garner has decided to share it around.’
Michael McGirr, Age
‘Garner is unparalleled in her honesty and perceptiveness…Experience the things she read, the things she did, they ways she felt, and so much more in this immersive thoughtscape. A delight.’
Booktopia
‘As intriguing as it is deeply humbling.'
Adelaide Review
‘For fans of Garner’s keen eye, ear for dialogue and shining snapshot moments, this is a must.’
Canberra Times
'In some ways, the diaries are the apotheosis of her entire career, and the most exciting thing she has ever published.'
Literary Hub
June 20, 2022
Audiobook to the rescue again! I started The Yellow Notebook: Diaries Vol 1 a few months ago and got a third of the way in but I was really struggling to read the short diary entries. Enter Ms Garner herself reading her sublime sentences and I was back to being hooked.
Honestly Helen Garner writes the most incredible non-fiction. Her observational skills are second to none. These diary entries spanning from 1978 through to 1986 range from single sentences to longer anecdotes. They could be a recounting of a conversation between Garner and a friend or stranger or a description of a terrible crime that has occurred and how that made Garner feel.
Her language is sharp, witty and deeply personal even in the shortest of sentences. These everyday moments that she shares give insight into the way her mind works, her emotions as her marriage breaks down and her fears that she is not a good enough writer. Goodness, it is a real gift she has given her readers to open her diaries up in this way. And while they are clearly edited down, the gems that remain are so insightful and help to provide a story of her life in her own words without it being a memoir full of back story.
The additional joy of listening to her read the entries herself cannot be underestimated. She read it with passion and the force of her own emotions about some entries was clear. At times she raises her voice and swears and at several moments I laughed out loud at her delivery of a line.
100% recommend listening to this one and I can’t wait to carry on with the next two volumes.
Honestly Helen Garner writes the most incredible non-fiction. Her observational skills are second to none. These diary entries spanning from 1978 through to 1986 range from single sentences to longer anecdotes. They could be a recounting of a conversation between Garner and a friend or stranger or a description of a terrible crime that has occurred and how that made Garner feel.
Her language is sharp, witty and deeply personal even in the shortest of sentences. These everyday moments that she shares give insight into the way her mind works, her emotions as her marriage breaks down and her fears that she is not a good enough writer. Goodness, it is a real gift she has given her readers to open her diaries up in this way. And while they are clearly edited down, the gems that remain are so insightful and help to provide a story of her life in her own words without it being a memoir full of back story.
The additional joy of listening to her read the entries herself cannot be underestimated. She read it with passion and the force of her own emotions about some entries was clear. At times she raises her voice and swears and at several moments I laughed out loud at her delivery of a line.
100% recommend listening to this one and I can’t wait to carry on with the next two volumes.
January 10, 2021
What a thrill, to be inside her mind; even if only for snippets.
October 1, 2021
I am, as ever, Helen Garner's Little Bitch
November 24, 2025
Kitabın arkasında Virgina Woolf'tan sonra yazılmış en iyi günlükler diyor. Emin değilim ama iyiydi. Kısa net fazla detaya dalmıyor. Adalet Ağaoğlu, Necati Cumalı günlüklerinden sonra hafifsemiş olabilirim ama bir sonraki günlükleri de merak ediyorum.
July 23, 2022
I think listening to Garner read this is a perfect way to consume her thoughts. Either I was in her head or she was in mine. Sometimes she says things and I think - I’ve thought that too! But I would never know how to put it on paper in a way that was interesting - that’s her magic. Exploring self doubt, religion and belief, how she handles public criticism, how she observes people - their actions and comments, her grief and sadness about the loss of young life - particularly when violence has been involved, and her struggle to be honest about her meaningful relationships with those closest her, loneliness and ageing (she wasn’t even 40 when she wrote these journal entries). I love the fragmentary sentences - that’s how we think.
I love the sneaky wry comments that made me laugh. At one point Garner mentions that she knows she’s not drunk after 3 glasses of Chablis because she has just sewn 2 cushion covers on her old Singer and they fit!
“Memo: do not drink coffee. It makes me uselessly nervy even trembly and engenders baseless optimism about my powers of creation”
(this is from the audio so excuse my punctuation if it’s not correct)
I love the sneaky wry comments that made me laugh. At one point Garner mentions that she knows she’s not drunk after 3 glasses of Chablis because she has just sewn 2 cushion covers on her old Singer and they fit!
“Memo: do not drink coffee. It makes me uselessly nervy even trembly and engenders baseless optimism about my powers of creation”
(this is from the audio so excuse my punctuation if it’s not correct)
January 5, 2020
Oh I just gobbled this up! What an absolute treat. Helen Garner was my first proper favourite writer, then I went off her for a while, but I have never shaken her and never will. These dairies are vintage Garner, from my favourite period - just after Monkey Grip and covering The Children’s Bach and Postcards from Surfers, or 1978-1987. Those wonderful books and stories were dismissed by some as jazzed up diaries - or what we may now call in more exalted tones autofiction - and to those critics these diaries probably prove the point. But approached from the other direction, the diaries are as artful, observant and full of life as the fiction. The policing of borders between fiction and non- fiction is so tedious and Helen Garner helped break it down.
She writes about the agonies and occasional ecstasies of writing, the joy of parenting her teenage daughter, the quotidian beauty of everyday life, the quandaries of love, the highlights and lowlights of the arts/ literary scene, Melbourne (of course), Sydney (fleetingly, but rather lovingly), various other national and international locales, friends from all over, lodgers (the law student HG fans will recognise from Last Days of Chez Nous), lovers/husbands (there’s the French husband, ‘V’ is Murray Bail but who is ‘L’?), housework, her dreams... yes, I even enjoyed reading about her dreams (most of the time).
This opening volume of what will be an ongoing series (hooray!) is superbly edited and a lovely object to behold and hold.
She writes about the agonies and occasional ecstasies of writing, the joy of parenting her teenage daughter, the quotidian beauty of everyday life, the quandaries of love, the highlights and lowlights of the arts/ literary scene, Melbourne (of course), Sydney (fleetingly, but rather lovingly), various other national and international locales, friends from all over, lodgers (the law student HG fans will recognise from Last Days of Chez Nous), lovers/husbands (there’s the French husband, ‘V’ is Murray Bail but who is ‘L’?), housework, her dreams... yes, I even enjoyed reading about her dreams (most of the time).
This opening volume of what will be an ongoing series (hooray!) is superbly edited and a lovely object to behold and hold.
February 26, 2020
I'm usually a fan of Helen Garner's work but not this time I'm afraid. Short disconnected jottings about her thoughts and feelings during her forties caused my brain to ache. Probably not meant to be read from cover to cover over a fairly short period as the effect is like trying to watch a television programme while someone insists on constantly changing channels.
November 17, 2019
To be honest you can not review or critic a diary as it is not structured and it is a collection of thoughts, observations and recollections. You can only reflect on the insight that is afforded to the reader by the author allowing you to be part of their intimate world. For I am sure many write a journal and many do not believe anyone will ever read their words until after they have left the mortal shell.
Helen Garner is one of Australia's great writers and she allows us to read her observations, her fears and her loves. These are not long entries, some are a couple of words, there are no dates just an acknowledgment of the passing of a year.
You get a glimpse of Garner's personal life as she writes about relationships be they friends, family or lovers. There is insight into Garner's writing process and the doubts she has as a writer, mother, wife and friend.
Being able to read what Helen Garner actually thought or how she recalled an event at the time is what I enjoyed the most. As that is her version of history, she lived those moments and put them on the page as she recalled them. There is no censoring, even climbing Ayers Rock is left in, as it should be. Helen Garner explains it best as to why she left the entry in in this aricle in the SMH. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
I enjoyed the opportunity to read these entries and I recalled some of the incidents mentioned. Especially some of the crimes that occurred and the impact they had on me and those around. Some moments had me laughing and others applauding her honesty.
Helen Garner is one of Australia's great writers and she allows us to read her observations, her fears and her loves. These are not long entries, some are a couple of words, there are no dates just an acknowledgment of the passing of a year.
You get a glimpse of Garner's personal life as she writes about relationships be they friends, family or lovers. There is insight into Garner's writing process and the doubts she has as a writer, mother, wife and friend.
Being able to read what Helen Garner actually thought or how she recalled an event at the time is what I enjoyed the most. As that is her version of history, she lived those moments and put them on the page as she recalled them. There is no censoring, even climbing Ayers Rock is left in, as it should be. Helen Garner explains it best as to why she left the entry in in this aricle in the SMH. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
I enjoyed the opportunity to read these entries and I recalled some of the incidents mentioned. Especially some of the crimes that occurred and the impact they had on me and those around. Some moments had me laughing and others applauding her honesty.
July 5, 2023
I love her more than ever.
January 5, 2020
I felt like a voyeur as I read Garner’s diaries. How brave she is to expose herself to us, her readers. She hasn’t censored her entries, even her climbing of Uluru remains. (Here’s a link to an interview with HG explaining her choice not to censor. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...)
My copy is thick with book darts marking the passages that I wish to quote; too many! She is kind and mean; gossipy and snippy and needy, but also generous and loving. She is spiteful. She is funny. She is honest. She constantly struggles with feelings of failure and mediocrity. This is a book to savour and return to again and again. It is delicious.
Here are my favourite quotes:
My copy is thick with book darts marking the passages that I wish to quote; too many! She is kind and mean; gossipy and snippy and needy, but also generous and loving. She is spiteful. She is funny. She is honest. She constantly struggles with feelings of failure and mediocrity. This is a book to savour and return to again and again. It is delicious.
Here are my favourite quotes:
*How we fight, tooth and nail, against real insight. Against letting go of what makes us suffer.
*Why I like the English language: because it contains words like cup. Fat, short and stumpy, and rather optimistic.
*…we don’t want to fight. So we do what women do: we fade away.
*I couldn’t help agonising over it, thinking of the smallness of my scope, the ordinariness of it, its bourgeois nature. What critics will say. What my friends will think and not say. How I will appear before the world. Oh shut up.
*M [Garner’s daughter] has her school friend over for the night. Together they enter an element quite separate from ordinary life - male and female characters, invested accents, vast fantasies, paroxysms of malicious laughter. There’s something terrifying about them.
*Young male photographer: ‘Come on. big smile. Love those big smiles.’ ‘Please don’t tell me to smile.’ ‘You look starched.’ ‘I am starched. I am a starched person.’
*The only passionate love that can co-exist with civilised daily working life is the love we have for our children. The other sort either loses its madness and becomes something else, or blows everything sky-high.
*It is perhaps always hard to find a person who will play out a drama with you right to the end, and not stroll off the stage before the killing starts.
*Maybe a marriage can get up again and walk, after a terrible beating.
*He’ll be like the Russians: he’ll retreat and retreat and retreat until I freeze to death.
*I need to find out why I so often get myself into situations where people have to symbolically murder me.
December 30, 2019
Lovely little snippets of a wonderfully complex, fun, scary and loving life.
November 7, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed these powerful snippets of insight into the life of an author I respect and admire. Her observations on life and people are at once economical and yet beautifully descriptive. To read of rejections and demands to re-write, the honesty of these small vignettes was refreshing. The regular self-berating, her questioning of her worth and ability and the casual way in which positive reviews and successes were mentioned was particularly interesting.
I have read a lot of Garner's works and although I have also read Bernadette Brennan's wonderful 'A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work' I don't know enough about Garner's life to recognise all of the people represented by a single letter and occasionally this frustrated me. However, for the majority of the time it didn't matter and I just let the self-effacing, honest writing wash over me. I look forward to the next two installments.
I have read a lot of Garner's works and although I have also read Bernadette Brennan's wonderful 'A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work' I don't know enough about Garner's life to recognise all of the people represented by a single letter and occasionally this frustrated me. However, for the majority of the time it didn't matter and I just let the self-effacing, honest writing wash over me. I look forward to the next two installments.
December 18, 2019
I would love to live inside the mind of Helen Garner. I just love the way her brain ticks, how she crafts sentences so casually and draws to attention such enormous moments of truth. There’s a lot of honesty in this. It’s journal entries, so we can’t expect it to be judgement free, and if you were to expect that it would be a rather bland journal. I love the brutality and softness these pages can express all at once.
March 9, 2020
3.5 stars. Overall a fairly fragmented collection of excerpts from Garner’s diaries - I found myself irritated by the lack of information/context for who most people were. But some of the excerpts were beautifully written, shrewdly observed and devastatingly accurate in their comments on human nature and life. So for those it’s worth a read! One to dip in and out of rather than read in one sitting, I think.
November 24, 2019
Loved every line of these books.
December 26, 2022
The goddess of small things.
The three-year tradition of enjoying Garner at the onset of Summer continues. Makes me wish that she wrote more books - because this is yet more straight-up gold.
Excerpts from Helen Garner’s diaries 1978 – 1987, she has just published Monkey Grip, her first marriage is breaking down, and she is wracked with insecurities about her ability to write. She needn’t have been, these diaries are testament to her god like ability.
The storyline that the reader can trace through these short entries is, of course, not the point. These diaries are phenomenal because they distil what makes Garner the best Australian writer into its purest form. The way she experiences the world, and the way that she can get it onto the page.
I can’t think of any writer that is as acerbically self-aware as Garner. Her writing is acid in the face to the artifice of human interaction, a voice of artisanal strictness.
Like the best books, I started to view the world through this novel’s lens. Tragic and funny; morbid and curious. That she wrote these words when she was in her early forties helps confirm what I’m already coming to realise. Life never stops coming at you with it’s leathery whip. Batter up.
The three-year tradition of enjoying Garner at the onset of Summer continues. Makes me wish that she wrote more books - because this is yet more straight-up gold.
Excerpts from Helen Garner’s diaries 1978 – 1987, she has just published Monkey Grip, her first marriage is breaking down, and she is wracked with insecurities about her ability to write. She needn’t have been, these diaries are testament to her god like ability.
The storyline that the reader can trace through these short entries is, of course, not the point. These diaries are phenomenal because they distil what makes Garner the best Australian writer into its purest form. The way she experiences the world, and the way that she can get it onto the page.
I can’t think of any writer that is as acerbically self-aware as Garner. Her writing is acid in the face to the artifice of human interaction, a voice of artisanal strictness.
Like the best books, I started to view the world through this novel’s lens. Tragic and funny; morbid and curious. That she wrote these words when she was in her early forties helps confirm what I’m already coming to realise. Life never stops coming at you with it’s leathery whip. Batter up.
April 25, 2022
A collection of thoughts, jots, quotes, moments, conversations and dreams, from this period. Working through the end of a marriage, single parenthood, struggling to make ends meet in late 80s inner Melbourne.
Recording exchanges, hurts, trysts, ponderings and deep longing. Self doubts and loathings. Her process as a writer.
Also a record of time and place - vivid Melbourne spots, visits to country side places, and Sydney. The background of key historical moments of the time, reflected within Helen's context.
From this it's clear that Helen Garner's shopping list would be worth a read - such wordsmith in these musings. A feminist lens on the brittle and prickly gender divide, within relationships, within social standing, fame, and striving to be.
Recording exchanges, hurts, trysts, ponderings and deep longing. Self doubts and loathings. Her process as a writer.
Also a record of time and place - vivid Melbourne spots, visits to country side places, and Sydney. The background of key historical moments of the time, reflected within Helen's context.
From this it's clear that Helen Garner's shopping list would be worth a read - such wordsmith in these musings. A feminist lens on the brittle and prickly gender divide, within relationships, within social standing, fame, and striving to be.
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