Helen Garner – författare

''I revere Helen Garner''s writing, and it''s in her diaries that she''s at her acute, rigorous, pitch-perfect best''Nigella Lawson''I come back again and again to Garner''s diaries and always find something new to admire. Her wit and observations are brilliant and her thoughts on writing are a guide''Daisy Johnson''I love Helen Garner''s diaries. I would read her grocery lists''Fatima Bhutto''The diaries are the apotheosis of Helen Garner''s entire career, and the most exciting thing she has ever published . . . Beautiful, riveting, formally electrifying''Lit Hub

Looking out the window at the two big gum trees, as it gets dark, I think: the only way I can go on keeping a diary - the bits about myself, anyway, i.e. most of it - is to conceive of it as a record of soul.

ONE OF THE BBC''S 100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD''Seductive as hell. Brilliant, unusual, breathtaking'' Lauren Groff''There are very few writers that I admire more than Helen Garner'' David Nicholls''A revelation. Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock''n''roll'' Madelaine LucasIn 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman.She is happy moving between the city''s communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely.But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him.On its first publication in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod in its frank portrayal of the lives of a generation. Now a modern classic, it shows Helen Garner''s dazzling and radical literary voice.A W&N Essential with an Introduction by Lauren Groff

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN''S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY''This House of Grief, in its restraint and control, bears comparison with In Cold Blood'' KATE ATKINSON ''It grabbed me by the throat in the same way that the podcast series Serial did'' GILLIAN ANDERSON''Utterly gripping'' MARK HADDONFather''s Day, 2005. Just after nightfall, a discarded husband drove his three young sons back to their mother, his ex-wife.On that dark country road, barely five minutes from the children''s home, the old white car swerved off the highway and plunged into a dam. The father freed himself and swam to the bank, but the car sank to the bottom, and all the children drowned.The court case that followed became Helen Garner''s obsession, one that would take over her life until its final verdict. The resulting book is a true-crime classic and literary masterpiece, which examines just what we are capable of and how fiercely we hide it from ourselves.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Rachel Cooke

''A jewel of a novel about a perfect family falling apart''DAVID NICHOLLS''The Children''s Bach is Garner''s masterpiece''PUBLIC BOOKS''A perfect novel. I was so stunned that I wanted to run around the block''RUMAAN ALAMAthena and Dexter Fox are happy. They love each other. They are friends.They live with their young sons in a sparsely furnished house near the Merri Creek: its walls cracking, its floors sloping and its doors hanging loosely in their frames. There is a piano in their kitchen.But then, one day - years after their lives have taken different directions - Dexter runs into Elizabeth, an old friend from his university days. She brings into his world her loose-living musician boyfriend, Philip, and her seventeen-year-old sister, Vicki. And all at once, the bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray.Helen Garner''s perfectly formed novels embody Melbourne''s tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Drawn on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, The Children''s Bach is a beloved work that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.A W&N Essential