Monkey Grip by Garner, Helen ( Author ) ON Mar-03-2008, Paperback

by Helen Garner

In "Monkey Grip", Helen Garner charts the lives of a generation. Her characters are exploring new ways of loving and living - and nothing is harder than learning to love lightly. Nora and Javo are trapped in a desperate relationship. Nora's addiction is romantic love; Javo's is hard drugs. The harder they pull away, the tighter the monkey grip. A lyrical, gritty, rough-edged novel that deserves its place as a classic of Australian fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Classics, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

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

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

AMORE TOSSICO



Nora/Helen, Javo, Gracie, gli amici, gli amanti e affettuosamente tutti gli altri vivono a Melbourne, in case condivise: un gran via vai, gente che entra e gente che esce come al Grand Hotel, qualcuno cucina, qualcuno fa pulizie, i letti sono affollati, si dorme con lui lei gli altri, si pratica la poligamia, anche se si conosce la gelosia, ma la si tiene a bada. Da stupirsi che le nascite siano così contenute, il trionfo della spirale.
Siamo a metà degli anni Settanta (l’unico riferimento cronologico che ho trovato è la caduta di Saigon). Fumo, erba, coca, acido, altro: e per qualcuno, brown sugar quando in bolletta, eroina quando possibile.
Javo ha poco più di vent’anni, Nora/Helen invece, già madre, ha superato i trenta.
Lavorano quando possono, quando vogliono, quando la droga lo permette, oppure quando la droga li obbliga a racimolare il costo della dose. Lavorano a teatro, nel cinema, nel design, nel campo della creatività in genere. Nora è anche giornalista free lance.
Non hanno orari, hanno poche regole. Colpisce l’assenza di violenza, di aggressività, di rabbia: appaiono tutti pacifici, più o meno sereni e tranquilli, gentili.
Viaggiano: Thailandia e dintorni, India, Tasmania, Europa, States…


Case condivise

Amante, madre, sorella - lui la chiama molto spesso sister, talvolta abbreviato in “sis”: è il ruolo di Nora/Helen con Javo, che tutto quello che desiderava era di far l’amore con se stesso, e per farlo aveva scelto l’ago.
Ma poi, l’ago si sceglie o è lui che sceglie te? The needle and the damage done. Nora, però, no, lei sta lontano dall’ago, dal buco, e da quel danno.
È un amore di quelli sfuggenti, che sono quelli che fanno più male e fanno più bene, quelli che è più difficile lasciare. Un amore sfuggente perché Javo ha un’altra amante, e questa non è né madre né sorella, ma amante sì: l’eroina. L’inafferrabile eroina.
L’ossessione di Javo per l’eroina marcia di pari passo all’ossessione di Nora per lui: entrambe autodistruttive.
Non serve leggere critiche e commenti che sottolineano quanto il romanzo contenga elementi autobiografici, lo si capisce dalla profondità di sguardo che trasmette una vicinanza alla materia che può derivare solo da una esperienza personale.



Gracie ha cinque anni, è figlia di Nora, la chiama proprio così, Nora, mai mamma. Ci sono altri bambini, più spesso femmine. Ci sono le madri. I padri sono assenti, se non proprio sconosciuti. O sono io che non li ho riconosciuti nella messe di presenze che frequentano e abitano quelle case.
Garner scrive con franchezza e onestà di sesso, droghe, di corpi con tutto il loro disordine: sangue, vene e sudore, sporcizia e lacrime e sperma. Scene randagie si susseguono affastellandosi in totale libertà, come un diario scritto in trance, come appunti presi dal finestrino di un treno in movimento. Manca struttura, manca tensione, sembra perfino mancare una linea temporale, momenti splendidi si alternano ad altri banali, quotidiani, si affiancano senza epifanie o redenzioni, senza una diagnosi. Ma la scrittura è probabilmente stata terapeutica.
Storia di un amore, amore tossico, storia di una generazione, storia di un luogo.



I never cared who scored the goal, or which side won the silver cup. I never learned to bat or bowl; but I heard the curtain going up.
Noël Coward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQRmC...

[Suz · Rating 3 out of 5]

My interest in Australian women writers has always been keen, and if anything, it is a genre that is growing with interest.

Helen Garner is an author I should have read by now, so I did borrow this from work with interest. This is her debut, written in the 80's about drugs, sex, and more drugs and sex.

It is a meandering story that has no real clear storyline. Communal living, the blurred lines between emotional love and sex; all intertwined with addiction. Everyone seems to be drug affected, most of the time.

The protagonist, and young single mother of one, never seems to deal with her child (where is she most of the time?!) and there is no clear depth or oomph to the story.

This is an example of what it was like: '... danced till the floor was too packed for me to move, and then I danced on a chair. I went to a party, ate some sausage rolls with tomato sauce, drank a plastic glass of punch, came home, made myself a glass of Tia Maria and cream; fell into bed.' Do you see what I mean?!

Maybe I'm too young to 'get' this one, I was a boring child of the nineties!

I will read more of this authors work, I guess I am interested to see how she has grown with her craft. I'm just not sure about how I feel about it. Perhaps the author's more current work will be more enjoyable (to me).

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3★
“‘I’ve seen the way she comes on to him—I just can’t stand it. You know—what really s**ts me is how you spend years working on yourself to get rid of all that stupid eyelash-fluttering and giggling, and then just when you think you’re getting somewhere, you find out that guys still like women who do that sort of thing. I watch ‘em fall for it, every time.’”

Yep. The more things change, the more they are the same (which sounds prettier in French, but doesn’t everything?) I’m sure there were cavewomen who were bemoaning the fact that some pretty girls in the clan weren’t pulling their weight and the men rushed to help poor little them.

I love Helen Garner’s writing. I did not love this. Had I read it when it was first published in 1977, I might have been more impressed with her first novel. I found it true to life - such as Nora’s life was - but repetitive.

Nora has a little girl, Gracie, and they live in a share house with another mother with a small child and assorted friends who drift in and out. While Garner admits that much of it is autobiographical (it never occurred to me that it wasn’t!), I imagine it was a lot harder to fit their activities in around children who were too small to leave alone. And I don’t think they did. I think they took turns being in charge of kids, but it’s very seldom mentioned.

The story opens at the Fitzroy Baths. Martin, Nora’s current fella, who is “teetering on the dizzy edge of smack” says he’s going back to ‘the others’ at Disaster Bay (National Park), why don’t Nora and Javo, who happens to be sitting with them, go with him? Okay, says Nora.

“So, afterwards, it is possible to see the beginning of things, the point at which you had already plunged in, while at the time you thought you were only testing the water with your toe.”

So off they go, driving at first and then trekking through the bush to the spot the others are camping and waiting for the food Martin was supposed to have gone to get. He forgot. People seem to forget to eat, and again, I started wondering what was happening with the little kids.

It’s that kind of story. Nora falls for Javo and his “violent blue eyes”, and Javo falls for her and there’s lots of lazy, drug-addled, sometimes explicit love-making (and it is love for them while it’s happening), but we’re not always sure if Gracie is in her bunk bed in another room or if she’s camped on Nora’s floor, as she often does.

Javo is a hard-core junkie. Sweet, caring but addicted to heroin and thinking almost exclusively of his next score. Nora uses coke and whatever else is araound, but mostly she talks and thinks about Javo, even when she’s flirting with the other guys.

“People like Javo need people like me, steadier, to circle round for a while; and from my centre, held there by children’s needs, I stare longingly towards his rootlessness.”

This is one of the few times she seems to blame her daughter for tying her down. She was married once, didn’t like it, and dreams of making a life with Javo.

I was reminded of a cartoon I saw when I was a teen of two teen-aged girls talking, and one criticises her friend’s thoughtless boyfriend. The friend says “Sure, I know he’s taking advantage of me. But at least he chose ME to take advantage of.”

That’s Nora. Likes to think she has a good life but is not really very comfortable in her own skin.

This is studied as a classic of its time, now, but I was bored with those people back in the day, and reading about them is still boring to me. Nora keeps switching from fitting in to standing out. Loving everyone, being hurt by everyone, visiting her staid family in the country, taking off at a moment’s notice to “holiday” with friends.

If it hadn’t been Garner and it hadn’t been a famous book, I think I’d have quit because I didn’t care what happened.

The stars are for her writing, which was wonderful even here.

[James Noonan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard about this novel while at uni, when my professor was waxing lyrical about Helen Garner in his usual effusive way. I didn’t particularly like my professor so I didn't pay much attention to his suggestions. Anyway, a couple years later Monkey Grip popped up on one of a best-of list of Australian novels, and I remembered making a mental note that I’d get around to it at some stage.

Fast forward to a week ago when I spotted it prominently displayed on a rack at the library, its cover—that of a young woman in a bikini sprawled suggestively on a pool’s surface—piquing my interest. I don’t know why I remained hesitant to pick it up—whether it was because it was written in the 70s and I didn’t particularly much care for that period in Australia, or perhaps simply because of its odd title, surely more appropriate for a first year uni student’s attempt at a short story than a great work of Aussie literature. It was with such reservation that I opened the book and read the first page—something I like to do with a lot of books I know I’ll never continue with. I think it’s a (wannabe) writer’s thing. As someone who struggles to get many of their stories off the ground, I’m interested to see how others have successfully done it.

I’m a sucker for good writing, specifically rich, lyrical prose that runs off the tongue like honey. It barely took a page for me to realise this would be a book I’d stick with. That’s how quickly I was hooked. I don’t know if I thought the subject matter would be something I’d have trouble relating to—a (seemingly dated) world of drugs, fluid relationships and communal living in inner-city Melbourne. But I was smitten with Nora’s voice from the get-go, her honest and often pained accounts of her daily struggle of bringing up a young daughter while navigating a toxic, ambiguous relationship with a junkie—a man furiously at odds with himself who she can’t help but love deeply.

Her evocations of desire were some of the best I’ve read, as were her depictions of sex. These are merely two examples late in the book on pages I thought to turn down (there are several others, probably better):

"In the daylight I was careful to concern myself largely with my own affairs. I was quite detached from him, or from my own feelings about him, and I thought it would never be the same again: as if I had unconsciously, over the six weeks of his absence, come to terms with the ways in which we would never be able to be harmonious. But occasionally I got caught out by his violently blue eyes, and the way he riveted me with them sometimes. The old fantasies were still hanging about...but I let 'em boil away for a bit until I was left with a gritty residue, which could be rolled up in balls and stored in the bottom of my pocket."

"He took off his clothes and I watched him out of my dozing eyes: brown skin, hard body, healthier than I'd ever seen him. He came over to the bed and got in, and turned off the lamp, and our bodies moved towards each other as they had moved a hundred times before. His skin felt burning, a fever from the first hit of smack in six weeks. Our arms went around each other and I heard him whisper my name, 'Oh, Nora!' and again my heart turned to water. I picked out in the dimness the bony lantern of his head and his eyes and teeth gleaming with that fierce smile, I came joyfully with no hesitation: but then the fact of his being stoned made itself apparent, for he did not come, and his body went on trembling and burning, cock hard and face turning again and again to my mouth in the dark, long after my energy had been exhausted and I wanted to fall away and go to sleep."

I was really stunned by how contemporary this book is, how while reading it I constantly forgot it was penned nearly 40 years ago. Nora could easily be describing relationships I’m a part of (bar obviously the sex part) or bear witness to today. Essentially I put the book down with a greater awareness of that most common of threads which has weaved itself endlessly throughout history—the human experience, and more specifically, the desire to love, and be loved in return.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

To start, I have to say that I think Garner has a magical way with words - I felt transported to the scenes they were so well crafted. I started out loving this book - and then I got fifty pages in and was like, "what is happening? am I missing some major plot point here? is my version missing pages?" Hence my problem with this book: the story itself was a little too meandering for my taste.

Don't get me wrong, I got the point of where/why the story was constructed this way and I normally love open-ended reflective pieces. With Monkey Grip, the device didn't work for me; I just got bored with how rudderless the whole thing was. This was actually quite surprising because three of the reviews I read before I got it from the library used the words "laconic" and "dark energy." After I finished it, I got a dictionary and looked up laconic because I was thinking, "and all these years I thought laconic meant straight-forward and curt - did I get that wrong? Does laconic actually mean lazy and abstract?" And what "energy" are these people talking about?

So, great read for the transportative quality of the passages but I was expecting a little more there there. I felt tremendously sad for Nora at the end which, truth be told, must be a credit to Garner's style.

[Nat K · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Women are nicer than men. Kinder, more open, less suspicious, more eager to love."

Nora Lewis is a thirty two year old single Mum, living in a share house with her daughter Gracie, in inner city Melbourne. It's 1975. To set the scene, ABBA, Sherbert and Skyhooks would be playing on the radio. Shows like "Countdown" (Do yourself a fava!) were on the telly, and people were more likely to take their dirty laundry to the laundromat, than have a washing machine at home.

By day Nora writes for a feminist newspaper. At night she likes watching amateur theatre, dancing, having a drink and a toke or a line or two of the white stuff. But her biggest drug is Javo. A handsome twenty three year old heroin addict.

"His eyes were blue as blue stones or as water coloured by some violent chemical."

From the start the relationship is doomed. Javo is continually looking to score as he only likes himself when he's stoned. His feelings for Nora tend to disappear when he's not high. It's cat and mouse, as the more she tries to love him, the more he pushes her away.

"I went to the bank. He went to score."

She consults the I Ching to divine what will happen. But the grass doesn't grow under her feet either. There's a carousel of bed hopping, as she looks for another warm body to prove her self worth. Equating sex with love. Her loneliness becoming all consuming.

"I wished I had someone to love."

In fact there's an entire chorus line of people in this story. A kaleidoscope of friends, and friends of friends, and partners of partners, continually changing and swapping. Moving between households and back again. There's an androgyny to the names, with Paddy and Chris being females (I'd always thought Paddy was a nickname for Patrick). People pop up out of the blue, no rhyme or reason.

There are repeated trips up the coast and to Tasmania to get clean. Sometimes Javo goes with Nora, other times alone, or with a mate. Groundhog day over and over. And yet Nora cannot give him up.

"Terminal naivety was my disease."

There's an intrinsic quality to Garner's writing which captures so well the Aussieness of the setting. You scent the heat of the summer and feel the ice chill wind that only an inner city can have. You sense the bustle of living in a share house, the kettle on the boil, the smell of coffee, hearing the hum of others sleeping under one roof.

And yet an addiction is an addiction, whatever it is. Nora's is being in love, Javo's with the needle. Even before the end of the book I was exhausted for her, for the futility of falling for the wrong guy.

"Smack habit, love habit - what's the difference? They can both kill you."

Sexually explicit and filled with drug references. It's perhaps not for everyone. But if you can look beyond that, you'll appreciate the urban grit of the storyline and the honesty of Nora.

I love that there are chapter headings. I've mentioned this in reviews for other books. It's a nice touch. That bit of extra effort. I don't know why, but they really make books shine for me. And what's not to like about chapter headings such as "Teach Me How To Feel Again", "Chlorine and Rock& Roll," "Dog Day," "Nothing To Give, Or Say".

I have to admit I wasn't keen to read this book again, as the first time I tried to years ago, it bored the hell out of me. It ended up a DNF. I can't even remember how far I got into it. The movie bored me too (and I love Colin Friels). But it was our Bookclub pick, so I had to try.

Luckily the edition I picked up this time around has a forward by Charlotte Wood (who wrote the wonderful The Weekend). Her intro to Monkey Grip sold it for me. It made me think maybe I missed something the first time. Turns out it was true.

It's a funny thing, I couldn't help but ponder how we can react differently to the same book, at different points in our lives.

In our Bookclub discussions, one of the other bookworms mentioned she'd first read this in her early twenties. At the time, Nora's lifestyle seemed incredibly glamorous and romantic. And that now, through more mature eyes, while she admires Nora's feminism and ability to speak up for her wants and needs, she can see that her life was neither glamourous nor romantic. It was more exhausting. Trying to make ends meet as a single parent, while squandering emotional energy on someone who didn't appreciate it.

I felt equally sorry and frustrated for Nora, as she felt too much and fell too hard. And I couldn't help but wonder where the young children who were living amongst this mess of relationships and open drug taking ended up.

Written in 1977, this book will take you right back. Apparently this is loosely based on Helen Garner's diaries from the time. There is such beautiful writing here, despite the grim storyline.

3.5 ☆ Potentially 4. I'm unsure...I have a headache.

Shout out to Randwick City Library for having this Aussie classic available on Overdrive.

Love is all, and the heart wants what the heart wants.

Postscript: In a strange bit of synchronicity, I went to the Archibald Exhibition (at the Art Gallery) on the weekend, and there was a portrait of Helen Garner there. It's colourful, bold and eye-catching. And yes, quite magnificent.

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/pri...

[zed · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The best-selling classic of a generation” says the blurb on the front cover. I was of that generation, but I have to say that I found this all a rather dull plod. Highly repetitive and may well have been better served by being half the page count. Would I have found it any better in my teens back in the day when I was part of that generation? I suspect not. My bookish sci fi youth seemed more interesting, and a 33-year-old girl falling head over heels for a useless smack addict (he had these wonderful blue eyes we were repetitively told !) may never have made the grade. And repetitively throughout, chapter after chapter, they fucked, and they fucked again, and then she fucked with someone else, and he fucked with someone else, and it went on and fucking on, her having her mind fucked over by those smack riddled blue eyes.

One thing that really really did, I mean really got on my nerves while reading this (other than the repetition of the theme and the repetitive use of the fuck word some may ask?) was the use of “Good day” as a greeting. “Good day” is said - g'day – It is the way Australians and New Zealander say it. Do not be mistaken, do not be misled, they say bloody g'day and that’s bloody it. g'day g'day g'day g'day. Editors need to get it into their thick heads that it is g'day and if the novel wants Australian authenticity, then to change any manuscript to “Good day” makes it sound like some upper class toff doing the greeetings.

Anyway enough ranting already, I am sure many loved this book but not me.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Garner’s breakthrough debut novel is still stunningly evocative more than forty years later. Yes, the characters are maddening in their chaotic and self-indulgent existences but the sense of place and wonderfully descriptive passages still hold the reader spellbound. I have to reread this every few years just to remind myself why Garner is my favourite Australian writer.

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real empath wrote this book. The crystal clear memory, and the nature of that attention, tell the story of one of the classic personality types that are often among the arts. Written in 77, despite becoming a rocker meme in 82, also is interesting for capturing pre-tech western life. The pacing, the dropping by and comings and goings, the phone as an extension of place, not person. Many adults today do not have a memory of that way. People who live by feeling in this way are often misread, but her tolerance is a dialectic that favors love, and she had an effect on me of literally wearing the shoes of others. Recommended because the I Ching was used to write it, which turned out to be key to a brilliant moment in the author's lucidity.

[Bri Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As part of the gradual hardcover re-release of her entire catalogue, I was sent this new (suprisingly clean and beautiful blue, considering the content) copy of Monkey Grip for a re-read and was just totally blown away all over again. It's a love story I shouldn't be able to relate to at all: I've never dated a junkie, never been polyamorous, and have never dated with a child, and yet I am aching and gutted for Nora. The voice is so no-bullshit and yet there are moments of transcendental beauty in her lyricism. Truth-bombs about human nature are sprinkled effortlessly here and there, as though they are like any of the other simple observations for which we've come to know and love Garner. Apparently 'divisive' when it was first released, this reprint marks its status as an Australian classic.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just finished Monkey Grip, I am feeling suitably provincial. Garner's 1970's story is utterly urban, and incredibly hipster - it would break the hearts of modern loose fringed copycats. People ride their bikes around from one inner city Melbourne share house to another, swapping beds, children and needles, and rarely seem to go to work. There is no internet. You go to a bank to collect your dole money. The writing is rich and sensual and the supporting characters are rain, sun, wind, heat, the feel of a dark backyard and that moment of falling in to bed, exhausted and drunk. Drugs are central to everyones' lives, whether they use them or not. Everyone hates the drugs, the users and the fallout but no one will say so. The rhythm of the book is uncertain, and moves with frequent ebb and flow, disaster and requiem, rather than the requisite "minor climax times two, followed by prolonged pause then major climax". It's like flipping between ABC and SBS late at night rather than watching a James Cameron film. People change their hair. Junkies steal things from their non junkie lovers.

Garner does not introduce characters; they just walk into the room and she continues talking as if we've already met. They have names like Georgie, Paddy, Chris and Joss, and she often leaves their gender hanging for some time. Often you aren't sure if they are children or adults. Edgy, perhaps, but for me it's a bit presumptuous. It means they don't make an impression and I have nothing to which to refer when they re-enter later. It also means I don't care too much about them.

Nothing seems to work, no one ever quite gets there. Happiness found is always pending further grief. Best laid plans always fail, but poetically so and occasionally someone learns something. If you can forgive and tolerate and be patient and not expect too much, it's incredibly rewarding. Which is the theme of the story, really.

[Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Without any real plot or drive, Monkey Grip didn’t blow me away – but there are many moments of beautiful prose, like little glimpses of Garner’s greatness to come. It might not be the best one of hers to start with if you’re new to her work, but if you’re already hooked and want to see where it all began, give it a go.

My full review of Monkey Grip is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

[Radiantflux · Rating 4 out of 5]

29th book for 2020.

A semi-fictionalised account of Garner's life as a single mother, sharing houses and drugs in inner city Melbourne in the 1970s.

It's hard for me to give an objective review here; too much of my own twenties is mirrored in its pages. My shared houses were filled with university students, her's bohemian artists and con-artists; our drugs were somewhat different, but not too much and we occupied the same spaces—read the same books, when to the same bars, cafes, parks, even the same public swimming pool. It was hard to read of her love affair with the junky Javo and not think of my good friend Lindy who overdosed a few years after I left Melbourne. It totally weirds me out reading about her daughter's life—someone the same age as me, who I knew from afar at university—who while growing up only a few kilometres from me, lived in a totally different world.

4-stars.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

The previous reviewer complained about the structure of the novel so I felt the need to chime in. As such, this won't be a typical review but rather a run-down on why I think Monkey Grip should not be pin-pointed for its narrative order or lack thereof, and enjoyed rather for its brilliant evocation of Melbourne, its lyrical prose and the way it unfolds like a waking dream. A lot of it is cyclical. To be honest, I was floored that someone could attack a work of literature this great on the basis of narrative, because some of the most revered contemporary novels also lack a "cohesive plot", and move with ebb and flow. Like a dream, or a heroin high, or rather like life. William S. Burroughs' Junkie and Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries come to mind. Or even the episodic, stream-of-counsciusness of a Woolf novel. Garner's Monkey Grip, set in counter-cultural 1970s Melbourne, is similar in its meandering rhythms and autobiographical nature.

What we get in the book isn't necessarily a clear beginning, a middle and an end at first glance, although looking back I was surprised to see that the seeds for such narrative devices/order are certainly present. The beginning: Nora is thrown into her relationship with the flaky Javo, the middle: where they are very much in love (or lust?) but also struggling to keep the relationship from tearing at the seams, and the end: when Nora, who has almost been "wrenched" away from her love for a hopeless druggie, has to put herself back together again after Javo (very much the equivalent of what would adequately be described by a Millennial today as a "fuck-boy") takes up with somebody else. So, ostensibly, there is some order here. There's also a nice theme in that both characters are addicts, with an appendage in life: Javo's is heroin (like the "monkey on your back of heroin addiction"), Nora's is love (epitomised by Gracie, always hanging off her back on the bike, or the men that she courts). Nora is never unsympathetic towards her lover, and Javo, despite his self-destructive streak, is portrayed as likeable, her empathy for this guy is always returning:

“I remembered only the good and loveable things about him, not the wretchedness he caused me, and the dope, and the resentments and silence and the half-crazy outbursts. I remembered his smell and the colour of his eyes and his head thrown back to laugh; these things were a second away, in time, but the others I dredged up dutifully, knowing that I must, for the sake of truth and sanity, try to keep a balance.”

Both have their ills, both can be narcissistic, and their intertwining addictions are portrayed as destructive tendencies that one can have too much of. Nora and Javo naturally find one another. Like attracts like may indeed be cosmic law.

It is not really order that Garner was pursuing. Instead, she has written a novel about something of the moment. It is fluid, a kind of classic love story, but updated to a very contemporary setting; pre-80s, pre-Keating Australia. A somewhat progressive time that flickers only in the memory of those who were present and participants, but also a time which burns very brightly in the minds of the book's readers. It's when hippiedom was at its strongest (Nora often consults the ancient Chinese divination text the I Ching for mystical guidance and strange synchronicities, free Dionysian love reigns supreme) right before the emergence of 80s greed and the AIDS crisis cast a dark shadow over "free love" and its bedfellow, casual sex. People have labeled the novel "grunge", which seems to have stuck, but it seems too idealistic and hopeful to be grunge, which basks in a kind of nihilism. Nihilism is nowhere to be found in Monkey Grip, even when Nora is most at despair and Javo seems to be drowning in addiction, the novel retains hope and meaning. Nihilism would not really surface until the 80s and 90s: born out of the hangover induced by the free-love 60s and 70s.

1970s Melbourne. You need not have been there. Garner makes you feel like you are. I was not yet born to experience this exciting downtown Melbourne living. Communal life, open relationships and bike-riding through city parks with verdantly green laws and cooling droplets of water from sprinklers - it's all so idyllic, so immersive. I was captivated as soon as she described the scent of early summer when things were about to 'heave and change', and the ritualistic bacon breakfasts, in that "old brown house on the corner, a mile from the middle of the city" on the very first page. Everyone is on the go in the book, it's the nature of modern urban citizens, and there are numerous scenes that take place on Melbourne's famous tram network. Garner renders Melbourne before its explosive population boom: the city still feels bucolic, with the chook pens full of happily clucking hens, veggie gardens in the backyards of inner-city houses, and the description of wide, open Australian skies that dome a large frontier that unspools not far outside city limits (trips with Nora and Gracie are a regular occurrence). Again, all so immersive. There is a particular moment in which Nora, her daughter and a male friend go to a Greek cafe on Lygon Street for kebabs after a big night out: it is rendered so palpably that you can almost hear the hiss of fat and see cooking grease dribbling down the walls of the shop.

What astounds me is that while this book is 40 years old, it feels so fresh, so current. This is a testament to Garner's writing, and how she rendered her own social scene, and a city (that before had little to no literary or on-screen cachet), into prose and art. Sure, there are things that date Monkey Grip (I'm looking at you, Brandy Alexanders), but rather than making it irrelevant it simply makes it a nice time-capsule of 70s Melbourne, a bygone place. Furthermore, she introduced a very contemporary voice to Australian literature, which had previously been, perhaps, self-consciously British. The diaristic dialogue is transcribed in a very familiar modern way, truly representative of the often rough, coarse, to-the-point Aussie lexicon as opposed to the subtle, stilted Brits. I am thankful for her voice, because Australia needed its characters, cities and hangouts immortalised in art. We still do.

[Ailsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Australia in the 1970's, what a time to be alive.
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"I suffered from some painful emotion towards them, something to do with Rita's daily struggle to live, and the fact that I had been through this struggle myself with Gracie, years before: hating her because her existence marked the exact limits of my freedom; hating myself for hating her: loving her all the while, gut-deep and inexpressibly; and beginning each day with the dogged shouldering of a burden too heavy for one person: the responsibility for the life of another human being." 171-172

[Zuzu Burford · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot see what all the fuss was about when this was first published in 1977.
What a slog. Repetitious, boring, cliched. To think this book launched Helen Garner's career is astounding.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry boring. Page after page of repetitive bore. Save your time - read candy by Davis instead

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd heard about this novel for years - it was a landmark book in the mid-seventies and later made into a film of the same name a few years later. Now that I've got around to reading it, I really can't see what all the fuss was about. The characters are all perpetual losers: mostly unemployed drug addicts, I had difficulty understanding how they could all afford to live in Melbourne's inner city, buy heroin and marijuana, and take care of their children. The narrator Nora, an occasional user, is in love with Javo, a hardcore junkie whose dole money goes almost entirely on scoring, and then he uses her and other women - considering his bad habits and poor health, he seems unrealistically attractive to the opposite sex - for every other expense he has, including a place to crash at night. Devoid of self-respect and confidence, everybody is ignorant and unlikeable, living only to escape into chemical highs and casual sex. After a reasonably good start, the story rapidly becomes dull as Nora keeps thinking poorly about herself yet still taking addict Javo back every time he wanders into her house or her life. Her self-loathing is gratingly repetitive and although she can see it is not helping her, she still does it, and her only reasoning for it is that he is fun in bed. She is as addicted to Javo as he is to dope.

A bit too much like a boring soap opera with all the drama taken out, this book was as much of a disappointment as the characters it describes. I had to force myself to wade through Nora's maudlin whining to get to the end. It's hard to decide whether my negative reaction is due to the nature of the awful characters or Garner's own skill with the written word. Her text has its moments but as a whole, it really didn't resonate with me.

[Mark Dunn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Painful. I was really looking forward to Monkey Grip given friend's high opinion of Helen Garner and also having enjoyed reading The Spare Room. While Garner writes beautifully, this book just has no story, or more pointedly, it has a short story that repeats over and over, and over...

Nora falls in love with Javo, then confronts his drug habit and how it hurts their relationship. She leaves him (or he disappears for a protracted time), and then when she misses him terribly they reunite. This story line repeats seemingly endlessly. After reading a third of the book, the story had repeated at least six times. So I talked to my wife (who'd read the book and warned me off reading it in the first place) and she said that nothing else happens. I read a bunch of goodreads reviews which supported that, and have shut this book for good. Life's too short.

Read it if you've run out of other books to read. No, come to think of it, don’t bother...

[Amy Polyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Garners prose is just magic. She could write a cleaning manual and I’d give it 5 stars. The trials and tribulations of drug culture is always a rough read, but Garner does it in a way like no other. I wish I’d read this in my youth instead of Kerouac and Bukowski. I know I’ll read it again, just to lose myself in that visceral writing of hers.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got a lot out of this book - and there's a lot to get, for a patient reader. It's a book about Melbourne in the mid-1970s, about community, about love, about addiction, about love as addiction, and about how you can only live your own life.

This is not a gentle or easy book. It is narrated in first person by the main character, Nora, and the reader is thrown in the deep end, only ever given as much about Nora's external life and circumstances as is absolutely necessary (and this is usually divulged with great subtlety). Nora is (in no particular order) an actor, a woman in love, a mother, a some-time drug taker, a part of a hippie community/commune, a feminist, a writer for a feminist magazine. We are taken through the year or so of Nora's relationship with Javo, a junkie, during 1975 (and a bit on either side).

What one learns from this book is up to the reader. If you trust to Ms Garner, you will be lifted by the current and brought safely to the end of the book.

[Anna Higgins · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first thing I thought when I finished this book was how many times can "violent blue eyes" be used to describe someone before it loses all impact?
I enjoyed the first half of the book but by the time I got half way through I was lost, bored and skimming through the nonlinear storyline, trying to connect the nondescript characters introduced every second page.
Well written but overall felt like a junkie soap show. The story started nowhere and finished nowhere.

[Ying Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like lying in the long, cold grass at Edinburgh Gardens, eyes closed, body warm, bum damp. Dappled sunlight creating bright-dark-moving patterns on the backs of your eyelids. A sudden, rising feeling of pain (longing? insecurity? jealousy? nostalgia?) gathers in your chest, and for a second it feels so overwhelming you think you’ll stop breathing. But then you inhale, a big deep breath smelling of sweat and sunscreen and trees, and all is well.

[Lisa]

I tried reading this a long time ago, and couldn't be bothered with it. It was on my book group's reading list, so I bought a second hand copy but could not make myself try again. I gather from the discussion in the group that I made the right choice. See http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... for why I really dislike this author's work.

[Lucy]

A sprawling and uncomfortable novel backgrounded by a balmy Melbourne summer. Made me feel like I too was in a relationship with a heroin addicted man child, but then remembered that I wasn’t and was very relieved. Kind of like when you wake up from a real bad dream and you’re like oh thank GOD.

[Astir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Me and Jarvo fucked then I was happy then I was sad he was doing lots of junk again but then we fucked then I was happy then I was sad he was doing lots of junk again.

[Declan Melia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem to recall starting this book in high school and giving up 50 pages in. It’s not hard to see why; Garner makes no compromises with her writing. Glad I read it now, hope one day to read it again.

A few years in the life of Nora, a young mother immersed in the hippy community of 1970s Melbourne. They’re not into monogamy, careers, or doorbells. They dig rock n’ roll, communal living, and heroin. Lots of heroin.

Goddard disciples like myself know that the 60s ended on 6 December 1969, taking Meredith Hunter and the hippy ideal with it in a foam of blood and chemicals. Reading Monkey Grip is like wading through the rubble of that decaying dream. Strung out sleepless nights on coke, methadone and formless heartache. The baking streets of North Fitzroy as filthy as the diacetylmorphine in your veins.

Garner’s writing is pure fire. A greater tendency for the poetic and amorphous than in her later work, but her eye for detail is no less piercing. A spare use of adjectives, everything is communicated with suggestion, just the right balance of prose and force. She remains lyrical without things becoming too elusive.

The first thing anyone will tell you about this subversive work is that it’s about drugs, but I think Garner wants us to think about love. I kept asking myself. Why does Nora love Javo? Between them, who is the sadder? The most tragic realisation comes when Nora works out that she preferred it when the object of her affection was hopeless with addiction; it meant that he needed her. How tragic that we’re so able to fall in love with the feeling of being used?

This book also challenged the impossibility of the aquarian ideal. The idea of love without possession is attractive; but everyone in this book seems to be struggling against it. Are the denizens of Nora’s world idealistic because they are broken? Or broken because they idealistic?

I’ve read that opioids feel good because the heart is on the penumbra of life and death. But can that be true? After reading this great book I feel sure that heart wants only to live.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a bit slow and repetitive, but I think that’s where it’s beauty lies. I loved how I knew all the places she wrote about and it just made me so mad that I’m constantly preoccupied on my phone. Catch me getting a flip phone…

[Misha Godwin-Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled to get through this one. I never found myself eager to pick it up, and honestly, I could see a younger version of myself enjoying it more than 33-year-old me. Stories centered on sex and drugs no longer feel compelling or tantalising to me.
They don't challenge me or offer anything new, which is what I like to get out of literature. This book, in particular, felt mundane.
And yes, life often is mundane but I couldn’t help feeling like it’s a form of narcissism to believe people want to read about your uninteresting and monotonous existence.

The lifestyle depicted here strikes me as a consequence of the sexual revolution, which I view as largely disastrous for women. Many women bought into the lie the patriarchy sold them that casual sex is in any way empowering or liberating, but all it really did was normalise men’s poor behavior. Call me a prude if you want, but I just don’t see the value in reading about graphic sexual acts.
I just never need to read about a woman’s mouth being cum into. I have no desire to know the intricacies of other people’s sex lives.
What does that add to the story? How does it elevate the narrative? I’m even less interested in reading about a woman being used and discarded by a man.
Perhaps sex was different before the era of porn addicted coom brain men, but it can’t have been worth the trade-off for the way these men treat women.

The dialogue in this book was, for the most part, unnecessary. It didn’t advance the story, and much of it felt like pointless yammering. I could have skipped entire chapters without missing anything of value.

The characters and their lack of a compelling story and emotional depth made it difficult to stay engaged. I spent a lot of my time rolling my eyes at their tediousness. Do they have any interests beyond sex and drugs?

The writing itself was frustrating at times. For example, the statement “women are kinder than men” isn’t inherently true. Men are capable of kindness; they just often choose not to be because society allows them to behave poorly. The book perpetuates this idea by excusing men’s bad behavior as inherent rather than something we enable.
Javo, in particular, is an awful character. He constantly says hurtful and dismissive things, and Nora never calls him out or stands up for herself. She demonstrates no self-worth or respect, which in turn allows him to treat her even worse. He doesn’t respect her, and she doesn’t respect herself. What does she even get out of this relationship? He’s selfish and draining, giving nothing back. Nora said she wishes for something steady and complete but then says there’s no such thing, no such person—perhaps because she keeps settling for men who offer her nothing. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By page 135, Nora admits she’s begun to hate Javo. She’s late to the game; I hated him from the start.

I often wished something dramatic, like Javo’s death would happen, just to inject something real into the narrative. Instead, we get repetitive declarations of “love” devoid of any real emotion. Despite the time spent with these characters, we know very little about them, and frankly, I didn’t care to know more.
I’ll give the book credit for its descriptive writing, which made it easy to visualise the scenes. Perhaps that’s because I’m familiar with the areas described, I’ve walked those streets myself. However, the writing quickly becomes repetitive and stale. How many times do we need to hear about Javo’s blue eyes? We get it, they’re blue.
A lot of the discussions are pointless and do not propel the story, which is a writing flaw. They never once speak on anything interesting or of consequence.
The dialogue was stiff and unnatural, with little substance or purpose. Much of it felt juvenile, and the few mentions of feminism or sisterhood were superficial, as Nora remains overwhelmingly male-focused.

Then there’s the issue of Nora’s child. Gracie is almost an afterthought in the story. Nora prioritises her lifestyle over her daughter, which is infuriating.
Where is her child while she is constantly getting high and fucking? Who is looking after her? What is this child being exposed to? She prioritises debauchery, hedonism and the men that she’s fucking over her own child. It’s such a selfish existence.
On Gracie’s sixth birthday, Nora doesn’t want to go to the circus. Who cares? She does so little for her child. Surely, she can set aside her own feelings for one day to focus on Gracie’s happiness. But instead, she’s preoccupied with longing for Javo, yet again prioritising a loser over her own daughter.

Towards the end, Nora begins to show a bit of a backbone, which made her slightly more sympathetic, but this was short-lived.
I’m not saying I’m entirely unsympathetic towards her. I can relate to her on some level and maybe that’s why she frustrated me so much. It caused me to reflect on my own past mistakes with shitty men.
The part where she mentioned grieving her previous body was particularly relevant to the way I often feel about myself.

Ultimately, this feels like one of those books that a few people deemed “literature gold,” and everyone else followed suit. But to me, it’s yet another example of the emperor having no clothes.

Two stars, purely for the descriptive writing. I just wish it had been about something worth reading.

[Sofi Le Berre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this read. Expected it to be super Melbourne oriented in a way that my Sydney self couldn’t relate to but I found it so subtle in a comforting way - also the subtlety of the Australian background and setting made me a little homesick! Otherwise I totally adored her writing and the little dream snippets. I did feel some concerns about the whereabouts and safety and childhood of Gracie at times but maybe that’s an unfair judgment and helicopter mum vibes of me.