How to End a Story: Diaries: 1995–1998

Diaries #3

by Helen Garner

Helen Garner’s third volume of diaries is an account of a woman fighting to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her.

Living with a powerfully ambitious writer who is consumed by his work, and trying to find a place for her own spirit to thrive, she rails against the confines. At the same time she is desperate to find the truth in their relationship – and the truth of her own self.

This is a harrowing story, a portrait of the messy, painful, dark side of love lost, of betrayal and sadness and the sheer force of a woman’s anger. But it is also a story of resilience and strength, strewn with sharp insight, moments of joy and hope, the immutable ties of motherhood and the regenerative power of a room of one’s own.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Australia, Autobiography, Diary, Audiobook

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Helen 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

Reviews

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is without doubt the most powerful and moving installment of Garner’s diaries. Kicking off with the publication of The First Stone and ending with Bail’s publication of Eucalyptus, Garner writes of literary success, controversy and a marriage falling completely apart. You feel and see her struggling within her complicated marriage and trying to find room and space for herself, her very soul and of course her writing. I’ve read so many books that chronicle the breakdown of a marriage and this is one of the best. Her desire for truth, for honesty, for respect – for a literal room of one’s own. Murray Bail comes across as a gaslighting jerk and a terrible husband which I know from the previous installment but was well and truly brought home here. That he predicted back in the mid-90s that people like me would be reading these diaries and passing judgment on him shows his foresight; and his desire for Garner to stop writing about him in her diaries his narcissism. Knowing what comes next for Garner is some vindication for the time and love and energy wasted with Bail. This is also a beautiful portrait of Sydney. This is a book to treasure, to revisit. Thank all the literary gods for Helen Garner!

[Kelly McConnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. THIS BOOK.

If you have spoken to me for more than 10 minutes, you know that I am obsessed with Helen Garner.

Reading Garner makes you realise you've been walking through life with your eyes shut. Her formidable powers of observation leave you feeling like the village idiot, oblivious to everything going on around you. In this way, reading Garner makes you want to be a better person— to wake up, take note, and seek out the minor details that redeem people and places.

How to End a Story is the third instalment of her diaries— spanning 1995 to 1998. While brimming with observations from everyday life, it predominantly follows the deterioration of her marriage to Australian writer Murray Bail. (Who, let it be known, is a %$^S). How she can make such heartache and misery seem so heartening and profound is genuinely beyond me. As a reader, you spend half the time raging on Garner's behalf and the rest in quiet amazement over her resilience, loyalty, self-awareness, and enduring ability to see the good in everything and everyone.

It's impossible to summarise any of Garner's work adequately. Her way with the English language leaves us all behind. Essentially, How to End a Story belongs on everyone's bookshelf. Buy it for yourself and your friends. Buy it for everyone you know!

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so to (purportedly) the final volume of Garner’s wonderfully accessible, indispensable and inimitable diaries. I’ve been drawing this volume out, rereading passages and marvelling at the pace, the language and the sheer clarity of the observations contained within its pages.

Every page rings clear and true - honest, fearless, magnificent. A rare achievement.

[Text Publishing]

The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of How to End a Story:

‘Candid and flawless, as we’ve come to expect from Garner.’
Nicole Abadee, Good Weekend

‘A tremendous feat [with] a bloodcurdling credibility…How to End a Story is further evidence that Garner is a diarist of genius and the intimacies and intensities will long outlast the sorrows that engendered them. It is a book of wisdom in the face of every folly.’
Peter Craven, Age

‘The true gratifications of How to End a Story exist in a woman’s slow, tentative unfurling in the wake of a relationship’s collapse.’
Geordie Williamson, Saturday Paper

‘A devastating yet enlightening look in to the private thoughts and feelings of an incredible woman. It is a privilege to read.’
Readings

‘Compellingly propulsive…While this volume is rich in small human moments and intimate reflections on being a writer…the central drama gives How to End a Story the quality of a novel.’
InDaily

‘Brilliant.’
Australian

‘As propulsive as the most addictive page-turner and as exquisitely rendered as [Garner’s] novels and short stories…Garner's diaries are expertly paced and arranged, as much outward-looking as inward, and as attuned to the quotidian as to the profound.’
Zora Simic, Inside Story

'Garner is often lauded for her unflinching gaze and unsparing prose. But in this latest volume of her diaries her command of concealment is a masterclass.’
Fiona Murphy, Kill Your Darlings

'A shockingly relatable account of a woman trying to chip out a space to live and work…No-one today would question Garner’s significance, her intellectual heft, her bankability or her right to the prodigious space she occupies in Australian letters…A monumental achievement.’
Annabel Crabb, Harper’s Bazaar

‘How to End a Story is a plunge into the abyss as the artist and the woman desperately tries to keep her marriage, her sanity and her artistic vision alive…Few Australian writers are as cherished as Helen Garner.’
Canberra Times

‘The most formidable book of excerpts from [Garner’s] diaries so far, a devastating portrait of the breakdown of a marriage and not least of the narrator: a staggering achievement.’
Peter Craven, ABR Books of the Year 2021

'An inspiring and thought-provoking collection that runs the gamut of human emotion.’
Happy Mag

‘Garner’s passion, clarity, forensic observation and humour are well in evidence.’
SA Weekend

‘The first two volumes of Garner’s diaries offer, as one of their chief pleasures, the feeling of time as it passes. They are full of small occasions, glancing insights, a slowly accumulating drift of actions and consequences. This one is different. This one is as compelling as a detective story. This one is edited with the sense of an ending….At times, reading this diary, you feel like a spy. At times you feel like a friend. At times you feel like a judge.’
Lisa Gorton, ABR

‘Garner articulates the complex, gritty and mind-bending rollercoaster of suspecting she is being betrayed, while railing to keep up the façade in her regular life. The universality of this struggle makes her latest work yet another page-turner.’
Law Society Journal

‘Sharp observations and revelations make for lively reading.’
Kirkus

‘In dreams and treasured quotations, conversations and therapy sessions, Garner uncovers the texture of minutiae, the vibration of grand thoughts, and the aftertaste of defeat. By the end, Garner is scorched, but like a spore rejuvenated by a cleansing fire, she emerges reanimated. Offering intoxicating insight into the creative mind, Garner’s diaries will tantalise the voyeur and inspire fellow visionaries who embrace such journeys of discovery.’
Starred review, Booklist

‘I was utterly in [Garner’s] hands…This is one for the introverts—the wary and the peevish, the uncertain of their looks, taste, talent and class status. Garner has an ideal voice to express late-night pangs of precariousness and distress, some more comic than others. Her prose is clea, honest, and economical; take it or leave it, in the Australian manner.’
Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review

‘Destined, surely, to take her place among the great chroniclers of lived literary experience—Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Alan Bennett.’
Financial Times

‘A propulsive, almost voyeuristic read.’
Anne Enright

‘A devastating and engrossing portrait of passion, artistic conundrums, motherhood, rage, resignation... leaves you drunk with awe.’
Maria Semple

[Melinda Nankivell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Helen Garner! This volume of her diaries covers the breakdown of her marriage to V, getting therapy, more self doubt about her abilities, and how people can actually be driven crazy by those they love. Again, completely raw and beautiful. Fantastic!

[Declan Melia · Rating 4 out of 5]

God is real. And she lives in North Fitzroy.

The demigod of Australian literature has blessed us with another selection of her diaries, and I think that this is my favourite of her works that I have read.

It’s the late nineties (Titanic is in the box office, Spice Girls in the charts) and MG is living in Bondi with her third husband (in the pages of this book, he is called only “V” but a quick google reveals that it is the novelist Murray Bail). I won’t be spoiling anything by declaring that the match has gone bad and that even a child could see that the diarist needs to break away from the fiction writer. The narrative arc of these diaries revolves around her wrestling with that realisation. Alternating between debilitating dependence and life-affirming moments of joy.

Garner’s incredible perception makes every page of these diaries a rare pleasure. Her appreciation and articulation of the minutia that makes life worth living is just sublime. MG writes about music, fiction, family, and love with originality and startling insight. Any attempt to underline all the memorable sentences in this book will keep the pen and ink trade in rude health.

The reading experience also led me to consider the relationship between fiction and real life. MG's breakthrough novel, Monkey Grip, was criticised for resembling a diary rather than fiction and pedants could apply the reverse accusation here. But if there is indeed a difference between the two, it’s a trivial one. The diarist in question struggles with lack of inspiration to begin a novel, she needn’t have worried. For writers with MG’s level of artfulness, just being alive – with all its calamities and victories – is a story after all. Perhaps a diary is the best way to tell a story as brilliantly ordinary as a couple struggling with the messiness of uncoupling.

Does pruning, or rearranging diary entries into the shape of a narrative make this work “fictional”? As if we don’t do that with our memories already. The realer it gets, the harder it is to believe.

Read this book.

[Stephanie Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another beauty. Few can capture the small and subtle like Garner can. She’s also a master of egoless critique of the self. The narrative shaped among the snippets is captivating, too.

[Ying Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen Garner’s writing makes me FEEL

[Tundra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savoured listening to this third instalment of Garner’s diaries. She writes with such acuity and self reflection. While it is her memory and perspective she does not shy from questioning her own actions or shouldering her shortcomings. My favourite part was when she described the death of “the rat” and then a second. The way she is able to weave disjointed memories into a singular narrative is extraordinary. The rat was certainly one she needed to dispose of.

[Ron Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read Joe Cinque’s Consolation, This House of Grief, and her short stories; Everywhere I Look and True Stories: Selected Non-Fiction. I have listened to her speak at writers’ festivals. She is up there with Kate Grenville as being one of Australia’s best female writers. I had not read her two previously published diaries. In essence I just saw her name and assumed this was another collection of short stories.
This book was not for me. I do acknowledge that her writing is perceptive and illustrative of her world and the people who inhabit it. But the running theme of this diary was the failing marriage of her and “V”, read Murray Bail.
We only get Garner’s POV, but Bail sounds like the hellish male from central casting. After reading this book I have a full understanding of the term, “gaslighting.”
As a one-time runner I would always do my utmost to not DNF. I had to apply this principle to this book.
When I finish a book, I usually sit quietly and reflect on what I had just read. I have this belief that every good book changes me in some way, even if it is only a few minutes of a degree. This was not the case with How to End a Story. I wished that Garner had put into practice her title some hundred or so pages earlier. Other than a continued gripe about Bail I could not see a purpose to this book.
The diary starts when “The First Stone” was published and I can remember the uproar and attacks on Garner. I remember a story on 7:30 on the ABC. If cancel culture had been known or used in those days she would have been cancelled. I think it happened anyway. Reading the comments on Good Reads is interesting. I haven’t read it, so I am unable to comment.
The diary finishes with the successful publication of Bail’s Eucalyptus which won a number of awards. Again, I haven’t read it.

[nina.reads.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to End a Story: Diaries 1995 - 1998 was by far my favourite of Helen Garner’s three diaries. This final one was raw and emotional as she narrates the ending of her third marriage. The book was less scattered than the previous two which wandered around her life, her writing and relationships. This was a very intensely focussed look at how a relationship can falter and ultimately unravel.

The husband in this book is Australian author Murray Bail who was writing and published his book Eucalyptus during the time the diaries were recorded. I cannot imagine how he feels about Helen Garner publishing her diaries as he comes off spectacularly badly. He is sexist, selfish and rude. He pushed Garner out of their shared house during the day to allow him the space to write when in reality he did as much socialising as he did writing and in fact found the time to have an affair. His fixation with his own work to the exclusion of Garner’s was riddled with misogyny.

Hearing Garner’s inner dialogue about how she is feeling as she is minimised and gaslit by her supposedly loving husband was devastating and yet relatable to anyone who has been trapped in a drawn out breakup.

If you only pick up one of Garner’s diaries make it this one. As with the earlier two I listened to this on audio read by the author and I definitely recommend reading these via audio.

[Rania T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad that Helen got rid of "V." She is the better writer, the legend and has finally been rewarded with a much calmer life after the tumultuous decade that was her 50s.

[Jane (Avid reader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Razor sharp, insightful, funny and cathartic - these diaries capture perfectly the dying throes of a troubled relationship. It’s a portrait of how marriage to the wrong person can rob you of yourself and transform you into someone you don’t want to be. It tells a powerful story in tiny snippets that are blistering in their insight. Strongly recommended.

[Georgia-Mae Chung · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was incredible to read and I cant remember the last time I was so enthralled in a book like this. Emotional and brutal at the same time with so much beautiful prose. I feel lucky to have been able to read something so unapologetically vulnerable.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Probably the most believable picture of the complexities and stresses of an intimate relationship I've read, albeit from one partners POV. And adorned with plenty of references to the literary life, both its insecurities and delights, too.

[Sandra Prosser · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first the non dated diary entry style of writing was disjointed and unruly. But over time I really enjoyed the pieces coming together, her life unfolding.
***
About a third of the way in I'm beginning to have very strong feelings about V. What a detestable man. No meeting half way, it's all his way or the highway. I'm feeling very protective of Helen. Yes she has quirks, no one is perfect... but... he is so mean. I feel like he is gaslighting her.
***
V admires a pair of grotesquely high heels that Marilyn Monroe is wearing in a photo. I look at them and see two instruments of torture. He speaks at some length about how women who wear high heels are showing that they like men, that they're prepared to 'put up with a bit of discomfort to please a man. They are much more feminine than women who wear flat shoes or runners.

This is what Helen is up against. In my head I'm yelling at Helen, leave! Leave now! But she takes a far more communicative route, an adult route.

***
I used to respect you... But then you lied to me... you always told me she was just a friend... that I was a jealous person... you gaslighted me...

When I read that section I almost cheered out loud. Helen is the narrator and the protagonist, yet it feels like we are learning this together.

***
Anyway I really enjoyed this. Especially the final 2 paragraphs.

[Anne Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this is a book full of misery. Yet so readable. Helen Garner’s voice is so crystal clear, sharp, even when drifting in a wondery way. It’s based on the time her marriage was ending, yet goes on and on. Thank goodness there’s a switch at the end , that’s how she finishes this story anyway. It’s evidence of the power of writing a diary when you have a seasoned analytical brain. Pretty intense, I read a bit each night, got a lot of satisfaction from watching HG at work.

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

In How To End A Story; by Helen Garner is a trilogy of her diaries starting with; The Yellow Notebook 1978-1987,, One Day I’ll Remember This 1987-1995, and the title diary and the last 1995-1998.. unlike most diaries these books aren’t written from day-to-day but our snippets of different things that happened from struggling being a single mother to living young and in France, letting her daughter go with her dad, her struggles on her writing at that time as you go from book to book you see how her riding and motherhood progress’s, to her budding romance with “V” and then the last book we see the end of that relationship. I found these events in her life were written honestly and I really enjoyed all three of the diaries. My favorite Takeaway from all three books was when she said the better the movie is the harder it is to review it because I also have that problem with reading great books and reviewing them. then again I identified with Miss Garner on many things such as motherhood and guilt empty nesting and being over someone who really needs to get over their self as well. she even discusses her drug use her broken friendships and just everything that happened in her life it seems she wrote it down in these books. I much rather read a book that goes from day today but I would be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely 100% enjoy these diaries because I did I just wish they were put in a more story type format but either way I still definitely absolutely recommend it and absolutely loved it.#NetGalley, #KnopfPantheonInVintage, #BlindReviewer, #MyHonestReview, #HelenGarner, #HowToEndAStory,

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I literally could not put this book down! Helen is unapologetic in her feelings and really goes a long way in validating the emotions of such a hard time in her life. There are so many times I wanted to scream and cry and throw things along with her! This has been my favourite of the diaries so far. What a journey!

[Sabrina Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO INCREDIBLE!!!! Helen Garner I love you!! This book was heartbreaking, but at the same time such a comfort to read (or have read to you, as I listened to the audiobook, which was almost even better as Helen herself did the reading)

Stifling with sadness and frustration, but always alleviated by Helen Garner’s whimsical and restorative way of seeing the world, and of telling a story.

[Sodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tea was scalding hot in this one, what with her crumbling relationship with a fragile male writer and her experiencing therapy for the first time. I love it inside her head, the way she experiences the world pulls me pleasurably into perspective on my own

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read all three volumes, How to End a Story: Diaries: 1978-1998, 639 pages in one book. Garner's internal and external observations in her diaries over 20 years showing her personal growth, shortcomings and struggles kept me riveted.

[Dcw · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great adventure

[Elizabeth O · Rating 5 out of 5]

My commiserations to all terrible men who live with Great Women who are reading this. I despaired with Helen, I raged with her, I threw the book across the bed at V, horrible little man, and I exalted at the blue couch.

[Geena Pelka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect for me, as per usual. Some observations:
- no one writes about house, home and domesticity like HG
- no one finishes as strong as HG
- V is a total f**king dick

[Tree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding! Highly recommend

[Sharon Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb! And heart-aching. Even better as an audiobook, read by the author.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heart wrenching honest book. A little slow to get into it and then you were pleading with H to leave! Such an intelligent, creative woman who could still come under the spell of another self absorbed human. It is easy to see how people can be trapped in unhealthy relationships.
I wonder what V’s version is?

[edga net · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zero surprises that I’m giving this 5 stars, thanks HG!

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Garner at her most brutal and unflinching.