Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
81st out of 395 books
—
185 voters
Monkey Grip
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-edg...more
Paperback, 245 pages
Published
February 7th 1984
by Penguin Books
(first published January 1st 1977)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,033)
I found this a very interesting read. Although it spans (more-or-less) a year in the life of Nora, the lead character, it has that hazy feeling of being a student or unemployed in a long hot dry Melbourne summer.
I love books set in Melbourne and I loved reading about places that were familiar to me in geography and atmosphere, if not in time. This is my Melbourne, but written when I was a child, so just a little different, enough to make it slightly dream-like. It recalls for me a familiar time...more
I love books set in Melbourne and I loved reading about places that were familiar to me in geography and atmosphere, if not in time. This is my Melbourne, but written when I was a child, so just a little different, enough to make it slightly dream-like. It recalls for me a familiar time...more
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 op...more
Don't get me wrong, I got the point of where/why the story was constructed this way and I normally love op...more
Was I missing something here? I'd read nothing but good reviews of this book but I found it incredibly frustrating. It's also difficult to look at images of a mature Helen Garner now, knowing what naughty things she got up to in the mid 70s. We know that was you, Helen- as if the picture of you wearing the Berger Paints cap on the back cover wasn't clue enough. Also I hope her kid turned out alright...
While in films I usually love when cool people hang out but nothing really happens. Not so much...more
While in films I usually love when cool people hang out but nothing really happens. Not so much...more
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 div...more
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 div...more
This book is well written. I am familiar with Melbourne so I loved the spare description of the place and atmosphere and etc. The characters though reminded me too much of friends of mine, the ones in scences and cliques. They are nice people to hang with from time to time, but if you spend a bit too much of time with them you find out about the group dramas and gossip, which seems to be so important to them yet appears trivial and melodramatic to you. And they all seem to know the answers to th...more
one of my favourite reads of all time. My copy is literally falling apart, but would never give it up. Its characters rawness moves me to tears. i want to scream, and laugh and cry with them. I first read it as a teenager and remember thinking how wonderfully colourfull and enveloping the writers words were. The gave me warmth in a time (as many teenagers feel) when most of what i read left me cold. I take it down, and dust it off every few years when i miss that warmth. Few books have moved me...more
So I have just put this book down and as yet not entirely sure what I thought, but I really enjoyed its sad meanderings. I think it was the connections that I was feeling. My Mum studied in Melbourne, then travelled. By the time this book was published she was living in a commune in Tasmania with my one year old sister. As as I know she was not directly involved with junkies but the scenes and the links back with Melbourne must of had some cross overs.
I liked Nora too. She lived a theory of life...more
I liked Nora too. She lived a theory of life...more
I love the simplicity of Helen Garner's writing. She really knows how to capture the mood without using over-indulgent language. I also love that she is from Melbourne - this wonderful sense of familiarity washes over me when she refers to specific places that evoke a lot of memories for me.
This book was written well before my time, and a lot of things have changed in Melbourne, but many are still the same; drugs are just as rife now as they were in the 70s, but the culture is a lot different.
I...more
This book was written well before my time, and a lot of things have changed in Melbourne, but many are still the same; drugs are just as rife now as they were in the 70s, but the culture is a lot different.
I...more
This book is told by the voice of Nora as she looked for that which is missing from her life. She does not appear to be able to particularly grasp what it is and when the opportunity presents itself, she backs up in fear. Doesn’t that just speak for all of us?! If it’s not one thing then it’s another thing.
I was starting to notice that I hadn’t fucked for a long time. It wasn’t fucking I missed: I wanted love. I felt sad and hungry, or greedy rather, wishing to comfort myself. I ate small snacks...more
I was starting to notice that I hadn’t fucked for a long time. It wasn’t fucking I missed: I wanted love. I felt sad and hungry, or greedy rather, wishing to comfort myself. I ate small snacks...more
What I loved most in this book was the lyrical language Garner employs in her descriptions of dryness. Often water or swimming is understated, and yet as she describes the heat of summer and the fires of winter, Garner offers the sensations of water--by way of contrast--in fluid prose.
The story does lack some narrative snap; it bogs again and again in love lamentations... perhaps, this is intentional. The effect is somewhat Biblical: much like the language of Psalms or the subtext of Hosea. Yet,...more
The story does lack some narrative snap; it bogs again and again in love lamentations... perhaps, this is intentional. The effect is somewhat Biblical: much like the language of Psalms or the subtext of Hosea. Yet,...more
Aside from how great it was that this book was set in a part of Melbourne I'm pretty familiar with, Helen Garner's writing totally blew me away. It's not complicated, there are no 'big words', and yet she manages to capture emotions and senses incredibly sharply and beautifully. This book was a great lesson for me about how effective 'simple', conventionally un-literary writing can be. One of my favourite lines was "And as the day began we lay together in my bed in the empty house and made love:...more
Now seen as an Australian classic but hard to read with modern eyes. Portrayal of druggies, musicians, lowlifes, actors etc - you just want to shake the hell out of them and say 'snap out of it' and go and get a job and stop wasting your life. Especially when they have kids. How they didn't all die of drug overdoses has got me beat - but again I read it with modern eyes and couldn't empathise with that lifestyle.
May 10, 2013
Philippa
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-2013,
books-read-before-but-had-to-read-a
The writing is wonderful but the story/plot is quite meandering and as such you do lose sympathy with the character Nora after a while! A story about addiction on so many levels. By contrast Garner's last novel The Spare Room, written 30 years later, is tight and sharp and focused and the writing is exquisite. You can see the stepping stones of it in Monkey Grip.
I read it in Australia which made me love it more than I would have if I were exposed to it first in the US. This book combines four things I love to read about: Australia, junkies, hippies and sex. I can say with some certainty that there isn't another book out there that combines those four things better. Good work, Helen Garner!
The story concerns a love affair between a young mother and a junkie. It is set in the 1970's in Melbourne. Predictably, the junkie is an unreliable partner in the relationship. Unfortunately, this is illustrated by a long series of very similar scenarios. Not much would be lost if the book was half the size, or less.
One of my favourite books of all time. I first read it in about 1978, and it felt so real to me. I have read it a few times since and it still feels raw and true and real. I love lots of Garner's work, particularly some of her non-fiction, but this is still my favourite.
Although this is set in Melbourne reading it feels like being transported to another time and place. A tram rides costs 40 cents!? What parallel universe are they living in!? Ah, 1975...
One paragraph in I was taken by the style, and continued to enjoy it throughout the book (even if some of the letters and exchanges seemed a bit over the top). I liked the observations, the changes in seasons, the places and streets I know, albiet nearly 40 years later.
I had to look away at some of the more graph...more
One paragraph in I was taken by the style, and continued to enjoy it throughout the book (even if some of the letters and exchanges seemed a bit over the top). I liked the observations, the changes in seasons, the places and streets I know, albiet nearly 40 years later.
I had to look away at some of the more graph...more
Now considered an Australian classic, launched public awareness of Helen Garner as a remarkable writing talent. Subsequently made into a film which also highlighted the hit song by Chrissie Amphlett and the Divinyls.
Always worth another read.
Always worth another read.
I love Garner's delicate & startling turns of phrases but the book rambles on too much. And I had no idea how was who by the end of it? And it made me want to call Child Services. But I do love the way she pricks into an emotion in such a raw way.
Beautifully written, but just way too aimless and meandering. I kept ploughing on hoping for some sort of resolution, but as my pages-to-go got less and less I realised that I'd stumbled upon "Days of our Lives" for hippies, and yes, nothing happened. I was left with Nora having the same BFO and making the same resolutions that she made at the end of every chapter and then promptly ignored - what a frustrating woman!.
completely different to anything i'd read before...and that's a good thing! a beautiful and crazy insite into one aspect of Australian life in the 70's....you can't help but think we've all been in a relationship like Javo and Nora
My review of Monkey Grip is in this blog posting on literature and junkies link: The junkie in literature: a reading list starting with 'Monkey Grip' by Helen Garner
Another one of the few I've picked up over and over again. Started reading it upon the recommendation of a friend while I was studying abroad in AUS & have devoured every one of her books since then.
Mar 05, 2012
Zuzu Burford
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
australian-authors
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.
What a slog. Repetitious, boring, cliched. To think this book launched Helen Garner's career is astounding.
I first read this when I was about 19 and loved it. A couple of decades on still love Helen Garner's style and economy - and it's unmistakably hot summer inner Melbourne - but the chaotic households wore me out. A snapshot of a certain time.
Aw, loved it. A poignant insight into Nora's romantic but oh so strong soul. I read it while on holiday at Moore River, Western Australia.
An interesting perspective of the drug scene in 1970s Melbourne. I quite liked the characters & the complex relationships between them all.
Jul 25, 2011
Book Bazaar
added it
Gritty tale of young people on the brink of party time or drug addiction. The characters were people I knew and it bought back memories of similar times. Garner captures the era and the restlessness of the characters. I enjoyed reading this.
I am in love with Helen Garner's works of fiction. Her style of writing is honest, subtle and poetic. This is a great novel with a eye opening look at the bohemian life style in the seventies.It has such a strong sense of place, very atmospheric. Read it slowly, and savour it.
So well written that I couldn't stop reading, but so depressing I was longing for it to end.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
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...more
More about Helen Garner...
Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Apr 28, 2009 01:54pm