With the release of her latest book Everywhere I Look, I am seriously loving everything that Helen Garner is writing! I will say that I'm a bit of a rookie still and have not read terribly much of her varied oeuvre but I've been scouting the shelves looking for titles. Some reasons why I love her:
1. She's from Melbourne
It's always great to find local authors as they have a distinctly Australian sort of feeling, can't really pinpoint why but maybe it's the I don't care sort of attitude. Plus, it's always nice when you can recognise the places she's talking about like I'VE BEEN THERE!!
2. She's a cool lady
Hear me out, this sounds like it could be sort of discriminatory/sexist in some way or another but she speaks about feminist issues with a real clarity. It's never 'feminism must be a b and c and if you don't believe that then not you're not one'. She articulates concerns and questions about the multitude of values and opinions that make up the mass that is 'feminism' - perhaps because I've just finished reading the First Stone...
3. Without bias (or as little as humanly possible)
She has a number of books that follow criminal trials and through her skills, never makes you feel like you should be leaning a certain way - rather leaves it open to the reader which is nice in its non prescriptiveness.
So here are some that I have read/want to read by her very soon! Thanks to the internet/Text Publishing/Goodreads for images and some blurbs. Some of the covers are old editions because they're the ones that I read and I had to pull them off dusty shelves at the student union library...
This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial (2014)
Anyone
can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway
past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in
August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert
Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I
headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic
plain.
On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father’s Day,
Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home
to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a
dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of
revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner’s
obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final
verdict.
In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the
story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the
courtroom with its actors and audience – all gathered to witness to the
truth – players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the
quest for justice.
This House of Grief is a heartbreaking and unputdownable book by one of Australia’s most admired writers.
This was the first of her books that I read. It's hard to say that I enjoyed considering the circumstances and the fact that it was a murder trial but all in all a supremely interesting book. And while you get a sense of right and wrong there's never a feeling of judgement within the pages. She seems to capture all the feelings of being at the trial from curiosity to confusion and sadness. Highly recommend for an introduction to Garner's work.
The First Stone 1995
In the autumn of 1992,
two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police
claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man
they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The shock
of these charges split the community and painfully focused the debate
about sex and power.
Whether or not you agree in partially, totally or not at all is part of what makes this book what it is - the opening of discourse and conversation in what is often a little spoken topic. Although it did cop quite a bit of backlash - as well as praise when it first came out, it's interesting to consider her points. I love how you can disagree as well as agree with authors to help formulate your opinion on multifaceted topics.
Monkey Grip (1977)
Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living,
drugs, music and love. In this acclaimed first novel, Helen Garner
captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are
living and loving in new ways.
Nora falls in love with Javo the
junkie, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the
choices they have made. But caught in an increasingly ambiguous
relationship, they are unable to let go - and the harder they pull away
from each other, the tighter the monkey grip.
Featuring a very cool and young Noni Hazelhurst from the film adaptation, I've just started to read this one. It definitely has the aura of the 70s (although I'm not really sure how I'd know) and that sort of Aussie feel. The jury is still out on this one.
Everywhere I Look (2016)
I pedal over to
Kensington just after dark. As I roll along the lane towards the railway
underpass, a young Asian woman on her way home from the station walks
out of the tunnel towards me. After she passes there's a stillness, a
moment of silent freshness that feels like spring.
Helen Garner is one of Australia's greatest writers. Her short non-fiction has enormous range. Spanning fifteen years of work, Everywhere I Look
is a book full of unexpected moments, sudden shafts of light, piercing
intuition, flashes of anger and incidental humour. It takes us from
backstage at the ballet to the trial of a woman for the murder of her
newborn baby. It moves effortlessly from the significance of moving
house to the pleasure of re-reading Pride and Prejudice.
Everywhere I Look
includes Garner's famous and controversial essay on the insults of age,
her deeply moving tribute to her mother and extracts from her diaries,
which have been part of her working life for as long as she has been a
writer. Everywhere I Look glows with insight. It is filled with the wisdom of life.
Haven't touched this one at all yet but soon soon.
