On Helen Garner

A brilliant essay by one of Australia’s most exciting literary talents, which offers new insights into Garner’s entire body of work and her life as a writer.

What I love, what I need, first in Helen Garner’s writing is a particular kind of closeness to self – the good, greedy, mistaken, emotional, fierce, sceptical, changing and disrupting self … But I also love that she’s always fighting to come back, enough, as well- find enough of a law, a rule, a family, a home.

In a brilliantly argued and very personal essay, Sean O’Beirne looks at the whole of Helen Garner’s writing life so far – from Monkey Grip to the recently published Diaries – while trying to come to terms with the demands, and the rewards, of Garner’s extraordinary, radical individualism and honesty.

In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.
Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.