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Diaries #2
One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995
Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work.
With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another – how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work and the enduring value of friendship.
Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look and Yellow Notebook.
‘Garner is scrupulous, painstaking, and detailed, with sharp eyes and ears. She is everywhere at once, watching and listening, a recording angel at life’s secular apocalypses…her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive.’ New Yorker
‘On the page, Garner is uncommonly fierce, though this usually has the effect on me of making her seem all the more likeable. I relish her fractious, contrarian streak – she wears it as a chef would a bloody apron – even as I worry about what it would be like to have to face it down.’ Guardian
With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another – how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work and the enduring value of friendship.
Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look and Yellow Notebook.
‘Garner is scrupulous, painstaking, and detailed, with sharp eyes and ears. She is everywhere at once, watching and listening, a recording angel at life’s secular apocalypses…her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive.’ New Yorker
‘On the page, Garner is uncommonly fierce, though this usually has the effect on me of making her seem all the more likeable. I relish her fractious, contrarian streak – she wears it as a chef would a bloody apron – even as I worry about what it would be like to have to face it down.’ Guardian
305 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2020
82 people are currently reading
877 people want to read
About the author
Helen Garner
52 books1,413 followersHelen 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
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
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
October 10, 2020
3.5 Garner on gardening was particularly great in this edition of her diaries. Same of course with writing, music and all things literary. These are her Bail years (he’s writing Eucalyptus) and boy does he seem like a bastard and their relationship somewhat toxic and dysfunctional. Ending with the publication of The First Stone, I am already beside myself with anticipation for the next installment. This didn’t quite have the same impact as The Yellow Notebook but once Garner is in your head she’s not going anywhere.
February 10, 2022
Rereading this in 2022, I’m still astounded by the way that Garner so willingly enters into this uneven and mismatched partnership. Every page inspires a simultaneous cheering from the sidelines with each small victory and a shaking of one’s head in despair at her continuing determination.
My 2021 review -
Garner’s diaries Part II are sadder and slightly less satisfying. Worst of all is the way in which she slowly shrinks and becomes weighted down by the ridiculous posturing and demands of the great novelist - her third husband - whose selfishness made me want to throw this book at the wall every time he appeared. I didn’t, because I was reading it on my IPad - another less than satisfactory experience. But I still can’t wait for the next instalment.
My 2021 review -
Garner’s diaries Part II are sadder and slightly less satisfying. Worst of all is the way in which she slowly shrinks and becomes weighted down by the ridiculous posturing and demands of the great novelist - her third husband - whose selfishness made me want to throw this book at the wall every time he appeared. I didn’t, because I was reading it on my IPad - another less than satisfactory experience. But I still can’t wait for the next instalment.
February 27, 2021
I just loved it. She was with a total dick who didn’t see her worth. Why? How? Did she have to put up with his shit to become the writer she is now? So many questions. The humanity just shone through.
July 23, 2021
So extraordinary the way she can observe and remember and record everything so sharply, even herself. Like dipping a thermometer into an intensely mercurial liquid, and then neatly and perfectly recording the changes in temperature.
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January 8, 2021The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of One Day I'll Remember This
'Garner’s self-deprecating reflections are profound and funny. Her dispatches from daily life in the late 80s and early 90s...are relayed in her trademark matter-of-fact prose, always oriented towards truth and self-examination, no matter how painful...One Day I’ll Remember This is a revealing window into the mind of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.’
Books+Publishing
'The spirituality of these diaries is worth a library of high-minded theology...Their acuity is ultimately healing. You will leave with the impression that you have not so much been looking at Garner’s life as at life itself.’
Age
'Will appeal not only to Garner fans but to anyone who wants a profound insight into the mind of a true artist.’
WellRead
'A delightful book, longing to be dipped in and out of, and, through it, the reader gets a picture of this remarkable woman.’
Readings
'The ordinary in these diaries – the daily, the diurnal, the stumbled-upon, the breathing in and out – is turned into something else through the writer’s extraordinary craft.’
ABR
'What a joy and a privilege it is to dive into the pages of Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries...If you have never read Garner, read them for the sheer beauty of the prose and clarity of her thinking. If, like me, you have devoured everything she has ever written, they will enhance your understanding of her work.’
Nicole Abadee, Good Weekend
'Helen Garner is one of the lords of language in our midst and something more. She has a poet’s ear, a painter’s eye and she understands profoundly and without self-pity the mystery of the tears in things.’
Australian
‘With One Day I’ll Remember This, Diaries 1987-1995, Helen Garner proves once more why anything and everything she writes is a life lesson in courage, acuity and the eviscerating quest for self-knowledge. What unites these three books, apart from sublime writing, is the revelation of the lengths to which women must go to hide their lights – protect yet nourish their secret selves – and the cost of such radical concealment.’
Clare Wright, Age
'Another 2020 reading highlight was Helen Garner’s One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995. The book is typically Garneresque in its ability to cut straight through the bullshit, while also being poetic, gentle and life affirming. Garner continues to explore what it is to be human – in all its endless loss, beauty, connection and grit.’
Alice Bishop, Age
‘I loved Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries, One Day I’ll Remember This. I would read Garner’s grocery lists; she’s one of my favourites. I must have underlined something on every page.’
Fatima Bhutto
‘This volume is proof that even [Garner’s] writing for the desk drawer is exquisite. Come for the scarifying honesty; stay for sentences that could have been turned on a lathe.’
Geordie Williamson, Australian
'Garner’s self-deprecating reflections are profound and funny. Her dispatches from daily life in the late 80s and early 90s...are relayed in her trademark matter-of-fact prose, always oriented towards truth and self-examination, no matter how painful...One Day I’ll Remember This is a revealing window into the mind of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.’
Books+Publishing
'The spirituality of these diaries is worth a library of high-minded theology...Their acuity is ultimately healing. You will leave with the impression that you have not so much been looking at Garner’s life as at life itself.’
Age
'Will appeal not only to Garner fans but to anyone who wants a profound insight into the mind of a true artist.’
WellRead
'A delightful book, longing to be dipped in and out of, and, through it, the reader gets a picture of this remarkable woman.’
Readings
'The ordinary in these diaries – the daily, the diurnal, the stumbled-upon, the breathing in and out – is turned into something else through the writer’s extraordinary craft.’
ABR
'What a joy and a privilege it is to dive into the pages of Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries...If you have never read Garner, read them for the sheer beauty of the prose and clarity of her thinking. If, like me, you have devoured everything she has ever written, they will enhance your understanding of her work.’
Nicole Abadee, Good Weekend
'Helen Garner is one of the lords of language in our midst and something more. She has a poet’s ear, a painter’s eye and she understands profoundly and without self-pity the mystery of the tears in things.’
Australian
‘With One Day I’ll Remember This, Diaries 1987-1995, Helen Garner proves once more why anything and everything she writes is a life lesson in courage, acuity and the eviscerating quest for self-knowledge. What unites these three books, apart from sublime writing, is the revelation of the lengths to which women must go to hide their lights – protect yet nourish their secret selves – and the cost of such radical concealment.’
Clare Wright, Age
'Another 2020 reading highlight was Helen Garner’s One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995. The book is typically Garneresque in its ability to cut straight through the bullshit, while also being poetic, gentle and life affirming. Garner continues to explore what it is to be human – in all its endless loss, beauty, connection and grit.’
Alice Bishop, Age
‘I loved Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries, One Day I’ll Remember This. I would read Garner’s grocery lists; she’s one of my favourites. I must have underlined something on every page.’
Fatima Bhutto
‘This volume is proof that even [Garner’s] writing for the desk drawer is exquisite. Come for the scarifying honesty; stay for sentences that could have been turned on a lathe.’
Geordie Williamson, Australian
June 25, 2025
Love Helen Garner with that type of love where not agreeing with each other doesn’t detract from but actually enriches our relo. This journal was to me a companion in teaching myself to be a "self respecting woman. A lesson that has to be relearned every day." Since Helen is a bit more self actualised in this dept, she was a great companion. I love her depictions of happy solitude which are throughout the book both when she is on her own and in a long term relationship.
"Home. Rain falling softly. Mad spring growth everywhere. Trees in my street heavy with leaves, a green tunnel. Thick greenness outside my window. I can put on a record. I can walk from room to room. Spent the entire day answering mail. I wrote thirty-nine letters."
And just as much love her explorations on what we give up being with someone else: "The difficulty of being in a couple, the long haul, the struggles for freedom within it, the demands for support and love, the disappointments, surprises, angers, the secret contempts. I used to feel things better. When I was on my own, in spite of my sometimes bitter loneliness, I used to notice things intensely. My senses were sharp. Now I’m dulled and ordinary. I plod from day to day."
Helen, you have really bad taste in men but love ya.
"Home. Rain falling softly. Mad spring growth everywhere. Trees in my street heavy with leaves, a green tunnel. Thick greenness outside my window. I can put on a record. I can walk from room to room. Spent the entire day answering mail. I wrote thirty-nine letters."
And just as much love her explorations on what we give up being with someone else: "The difficulty of being in a couple, the long haul, the struggles for freedom within it, the demands for support and love, the disappointments, surprises, angers, the secret contempts. I used to feel things better. When I was on my own, in spite of my sometimes bitter loneliness, I used to notice things intensely. My senses were sharp. Now I’m dulled and ordinary. I plod from day to day."
Helen, you have really bad taste in men but love ya.
September 14, 2023
Just love reading her, despite some misaligned views. Such intimate insight into feelings and emotions, experiences. Crazy to see the development of writing The First Stone; also of the way she felt and was treated in her relationship. Always inspires me to write more.
February 26, 2023
The same problem with the previous volume persists with this one: insufficient identification of people, a problem or obstacle to understanding that, perhaps, will be rectified once everyone's dead and the diaries can be released with notes, etc.
The positives: good writing, self-lacerations, and laceration of others. Garner has an eye for problem husbands, an eye that opens a bit too late. She's also quick to point out her faults. This isn't a charming and cuddly diary. It's acerbic and sad, depressed and elated, mothering/partnering and cold, filled with social commentary (albeit of an unfamiliar terrain, melbourne and sydney, australia, primarily), with much talk about painting, music, and literature, the relationships between people, and the love of dogs and small children.
Garner doesn't think much of her own journalism, novels, short stories, and non-fiction. There are numerous examples of this sentiment: "My work is very minor. It will never be noticed by the world at large." Then a redeeming thought that hints at the pressure she puts on herself: "But this does not excuse me from the responsibilities of any artist." (p198)
Highly recommended. I'm waiting for volume 3, 1995-1998, to arrive.
The positives: good writing, self-lacerations, and laceration of others. Garner has an eye for problem husbands, an eye that opens a bit too late. She's also quick to point out her faults. This isn't a charming and cuddly diary. It's acerbic and sad, depressed and elated, mothering/partnering and cold, filled with social commentary (albeit of an unfamiliar terrain, melbourne and sydney, australia, primarily), with much talk about painting, music, and literature, the relationships between people, and the love of dogs and small children.
Garner doesn't think much of her own journalism, novels, short stories, and non-fiction. There are numerous examples of this sentiment: "My work is very minor. It will never be noticed by the world at large." Then a redeeming thought that hints at the pressure she puts on herself: "But this does not excuse me from the responsibilities of any artist." (p198)
Highly recommended. I'm waiting for volume 3, 1995-1998, to arrive.
December 28, 2020
I am a Garner tragic, so I know that her first book Monkey Grip was slammed at the time by one critic as something less than a novel - indeed, he accused HG of publishing her diaries. Ha! Fast forward a few decades and she has published two volumes of her diaries and like Monkey Grip they rank up there with the most satisfying reading experiences of my life.
October 7, 2022
I wonder what would it be like if you could transcribe every thought you had? Well if you were as smart and self-assured as Helen Garner it might read like one of her diaries. I recently listened to One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995 which is the second book from her diary collection. As with her other audio books it is narrated by her which I find works very well.
In this time period we are in the aftermath of the author’s second divorce and then follow as she enters a long term affair with a married man which ultimately leads to her third marriage and finally ending with the release of her controversial book The First Stone.
The structure follows the first diary with snippets building over time to form a general picture of her life and thoughts across the years. This time round the structure didn’t engage me quite as much and it did feel a bit “samey” and a little less interesting.
What I did find though was that it was a really interesting look at relationships with all the petty arguments and hurt feelings that people who are together for a long time can experience. But her third husband (author Murray Bail) was so problematic! They were in an affair for some time while he is still married. I was very conflicted reading these parts as Helen talks about the relationship and wonders about his wife. This made me feel a little icky! He is also such a sexist pig. He claims he can't have her in the house at all when he works so she just goes out every day! He also won't pull his weight with cooking and cleaning which was just odious to read. He doesn’t come off looking particularly good through this book and I wonder what he thinks of it (they are since divorced).
Listening to Garner read her own diaries really shows her vulnerability as she often is very self-critical. It must have taken a lot of courage to release some of this writing which while obviously carefully selected still gives away some of her most private thoughts. Overall I like Garner’s non-fiction writing but didn’t find this collection to be quite as effective as the first.
In this time period we are in the aftermath of the author’s second divorce and then follow as she enters a long term affair with a married man which ultimately leads to her third marriage and finally ending with the release of her controversial book The First Stone.
The structure follows the first diary with snippets building over time to form a general picture of her life and thoughts across the years. This time round the structure didn’t engage me quite as much and it did feel a bit “samey” and a little less interesting.
What I did find though was that it was a really interesting look at relationships with all the petty arguments and hurt feelings that people who are together for a long time can experience. But her third husband (author Murray Bail) was so problematic! They were in an affair for some time while he is still married. I was very conflicted reading these parts as Helen talks about the relationship and wonders about his wife. This made me feel a little icky! He is also such a sexist pig. He claims he can't have her in the house at all when he works so she just goes out every day! He also won't pull his weight with cooking and cleaning which was just odious to read. He doesn’t come off looking particularly good through this book and I wonder what he thinks of it (they are since divorced).
Listening to Garner read her own diaries really shows her vulnerability as she often is very self-critical. It must have taken a lot of courage to release some of this writing which while obviously carefully selected still gives away some of her most private thoughts. Overall I like Garner’s non-fiction writing but didn’t find this collection to be quite as effective as the first.
January 5, 2022
This diary collection reads like a novel, which is both its strength and its weakness. More a strength though. Where the first installment, The Yellow Notebook, was eclectic in its preoccupations, jumping episodically, delightfully surprising, from a landscape observation to a writerly lament to joy at friendships to commentary/confessions around men-women relationships, this volume mostly chronicles the blossoming of the relationship between Garner and Murray, and then the beginning of its decline. The flow is more predictable but no less insightful, and deeply satisfying. I tried to slow down my reading so much I relished Garner's sharp as well as poetic voice.
May 23, 2021
I didn’t want it to end. I loved it so much I was actually shocked when it finished. Thank you Helen for sharing your life with us. Your writing, life and thoughts are soothing and thought provoking in so many ways. Next installment please!!
February 6, 2022
In the second volume of her diaries, Garner grapples with how to live, love, create, age. How to be a person, a mother, a wife, a woman, a writer. She is vicious and vulnerable, and her insights and reflections on every page are breathtaking. Garner's barbed relationship with Murray Bail and his physical and psychological encroachment on her creative confidence and freedom form one of the strongest arguments against marriage I've encountered.
July 25, 2021
One of my favourite books of the year----so many times I would marvel at her honesty (and envy it) and the quality of her writing. It made me want to read "Monkey Grip" again---and I was desperate to know V's identity. He finally became known (but not liked) through clues in the narrative. Highly recommended.
9/10
9/10
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July 17, 2023I don't always agree with her, in fact, about half the time I don't, but there's something about her writing about her daily life that lights up my own life for observation, so, thanks
January 1, 2026
another cracking crackling fizzing installment of HG diaries. again so beautifully read by hg herself. have now curled up on sofa with the final volume
February 4, 2022
Unsurprisingly honest
June 6, 2024
Ms Garner's second volume of her diarys was another very interesting wander through her day-to-day life. I would call it an extraordinary read however I doubt if the author would agree.
Diarys (mostly) are not intended to be read by others so, again, I wondered about the possible editing of the content. Whatever though, it takes a brave person to open themselves up in such a public fashion.
Diarys (mostly) are not intended to be read by others so, again, I wondered about the possible editing of the content. Whatever though, it takes a brave person to open themselves up in such a public fashion.
January 30, 2022
I took a long time to read this and I loved every page. Like the Yellow Notebook, it is easy to dip in and out of, and while many may read for the inside info on other people, it’s the sharp observations of her surroundings, herself and also just random daily incidents. This book is way more distressing than the previous one - it’s like watching someone fade before your eyes. I hope we get some diaries after her marriage too. I was breathless with indignation when he decided to sell her piano.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2020
I have loved pretty much everything by Helen Garner, including these diaries. But they are so self-critical it’s hard to align the writing with the confident woman I assumed she must be. Some sections were almost painful to read - I can’t imagine what those periods were like to live through.
December 9, 2020
Ah! Back in the land of Helen Garner. This time we follow Helen's thoughts and musings between the mid-80s to mid-90s, culminating in the publication of The First Stone and the resulting outcry.
One Day I'll Remember This is another opportunity to dip in and out of Helen's life and discover a multitude of gorgeously written, insightful and relatable vignettes that makes the dip worthwhile.
There's her passionate but dysfunctional affair with V where her bewilderment at some of his behaviour presages the subsequent failure of their marriage. She is wistfully heartsick on the tug of a child growing up and away, "This state is like a second labour. I'm struggling to let her be born."
Her struggle to find a physical home seems to echo her search for an emotional one. At her primitive holiday cottage in Primrose Gully she worries she'll be lonely but on the other hand doesn't mind that she talks to herself.
Garner's diaries are full of the sort of self-doubt and vulnerability all writers are familiar with, but she describes the delightful satisfaction of nailing a story in ways that will inspire, "I pulled things out of thin air. I dragged stuff out of chaos. The moment when, working off diary material as a basis, I begin to invent: like the first moment on an unsupported two-wheeler, or ice skates, letting go, doing it on my own."
This second instalment of Helen Garner's diaries is, like Yellow Notebook, a hardback edition which feels as though it deserves a permanent place on one's desk or bedside table; a trove of anecdotes and observations to influence, outrage, motivate, touch or bring forth a bemused Garner-like chuckle.
One Day I'll Remember This is another opportunity to dip in and out of Helen's life and discover a multitude of gorgeously written, insightful and relatable vignettes that makes the dip worthwhile.
There's her passionate but dysfunctional affair with V where her bewilderment at some of his behaviour presages the subsequent failure of their marriage. She is wistfully heartsick on the tug of a child growing up and away, "This state is like a second labour. I'm struggling to let her be born."
Her struggle to find a physical home seems to echo her search for an emotional one. At her primitive holiday cottage in Primrose Gully she worries she'll be lonely but on the other hand doesn't mind that she talks to herself.
Garner's diaries are full of the sort of self-doubt and vulnerability all writers are familiar with, but she describes the delightful satisfaction of nailing a story in ways that will inspire, "I pulled things out of thin air. I dragged stuff out of chaos. The moment when, working off diary material as a basis, I begin to invent: like the first moment on an unsupported two-wheeler, or ice skates, letting go, doing it on my own."
This second instalment of Helen Garner's diaries is, like Yellow Notebook, a hardback edition which feels as though it deserves a permanent place on one's desk or bedside table; a trove of anecdotes and observations to influence, outrage, motivate, touch or bring forth a bemused Garner-like chuckle.
April 19, 2021
Finished this and really enjoyed it. It is made up of extracts taken from her diaries from 1987 to 1995 - which took a little adjusting to as some are no longer than a single sentence. She is an incredibly good storyteller though and with these snippets she weaves a detailed picture of her days. The main themes were her relationships (friendships and professional) with others, a new love and marriage, her writing and the literary world she inhabits. Gardening, her religion, her mothering and menopause also get a look in. The only hiccup in reading I had was that central characters in her life are referred to by a first initial only. This required keeping in my head who R or Y etc were, and what happened last time they were mentioned. Some I worked out but I was too lazy to try to find names for all of them - not good but the initials themselves took on a life of their own albeit minus their real life ID, and it still worked. The diaries begin with a newly hatched relationship and that one I did seek out as it is the core of these years and around which all else circulates. Two very strong and articulate people equally committed to one another with incidents that engaged me on the level of a satisfying reading experience on all levels. Her portrayal of it made me annoyed with them both as individuals but simultaneously both good and a little envious of many aspects of their relationship. It has a heartbeat all of its own.
February 13, 2023
I would read about her watching paint dry.
March 23, 2021
I experience such relief and joy reading Helen Garner. She makes me feel legitimised! That someone with such intellect and talent can have wretched self-doubt, powerful rages, kowtow to selfishly blinkered men, conflict with obtuse parents - it makes my heart explode with love for her. The hard kernel she describes in her heart - we all have it! The difference is, HG manages to peel open that kernel and reveal it to us, so we can know and love ourselves just that little bit more.
February 23, 2021
I just want to meet her and hug her. Loved this volume for its honesty and raw look at love and not being met half way, and the criticism faced when writing The First Stone. Actually there was so much in this collection that I can’t unpack it all. Wonderful.
February 2, 2021
Big fan of Garner, but this did not grab me or keep my interest as her other books have.
Quite sad to read about her marriage.
Quite sad to read about her marriage.
April 7, 2021
Once I got going on this I really couldn’t put it down. A little more narrative than her previous notebook but filled with as much raw, genuine and real emotion. Loved it.
December 11, 2021
Reading these diaries honestly feels life-changing.
May 9, 2022
With the diaries, I am aghast at my own undisciplined, intemperate reading of them, behaving as if I was following a soap opera.” (Diaries: Empirical Evidence and Desire review by Moya Costello)
I am with you Moya, I was really hooked by this second diary. It’s an engrossing insight into the decisions and impulses that propel people towards and from relationships. Garner is a middle aged woman when she marries V (Murray Bail) during this period of the diaries. She has a fully fledged life in Melbourne, a grown daughter, friends, a working life. V lives in Sydney, initially he is married, and he has very definite views about how life should be lived.
I identified with so many of the questions that circle through the writing: What does it mean to be in a relationship? What can you keep of your single life and what do you wish to throw away? How wonderful it is when you are with someone who is interesting, loving, nourishing. But how do you accommodate different ways of being/seeing? It’s quite emotionally raw (albeit polished in terms of the actual writing).
In 1993, Garner said to an interviewer: “Marriage is an institution that is not set up with the welfare of women in mind ..It’s a very, very powerful urge in people, the urge to marry, and I think that to remain ‘a tough talking radical’ in the face of deep human needs and huge sacrifices that people are knowingly willing to make would be blind.” (quoted in the Brennan biography, p75)
Two important things happen in this diary – she marries V and moves to Sydney and, at the end of this period, she publishes the First Stone. These things are connected. It is clear from the diaries that her confidence about her fiction writing is shaken. She is not a writer like V – and he clearly doesn’t rate the type of writing that she does. “I asked V what he ‘really thought’ of my work. He said he thought it was very good but that I should get beyond the subject matter that limited me, ‘those households, what are they called? That you always write about?” (1992) And “In one hilarious scene, Garner cleans the bathroom while V stands at the door advising her to stop writing about that “bullshit” period, the 1970s, and she responds that the portrayal of relations between men and women in his work feels like the 1950s rather than the “no place” and “no time” he believes it to be.”
In 1989 she writes: “Alice Munro is deceptively naturalistic. All that present tense, detail of clothes, household matters, then two or three pages in there’s a gear change and everything gets deeper, more wildly resonant. She doesn’t answer the questions she makes you ask. She wants you to walk away anxious.” (1989) Earlier on, after watching a French film, she realises that the style is something that she can emulate: “…short stabs, little explanation, textual silence… Garner creates a series of intense moments or reflections and separates them. Meaning is generated and resonates across the space and time of the blank page.” (quoted in the Brennan biography, p54) This is what the diary-reading experience is – in spades.
She begins to make more of a living from reviews and non-fiction newspaper articles. She’s influenced by writers such as Janet Malcolm. The struggle to work out what it is she wants to say in The First Stone is solved when she realises that she can include her own ambivalences and furies, rebuffs and struggles as part of the narrative.
But most importantly, the diaries are about the intimate collisions of a relationship. I kept urging her to leave V – he comes across as such a domineering narcissist in this diary. He can’t stand noise while he is working so Garner needs to leave home each day and stay away until the end of the day while he works on his novel (“Eucalyptus”). He made me so angry – but the arm-wrestle between them made compelling and voyeuristic reading.
I am with you Moya, I was really hooked by this second diary. It’s an engrossing insight into the decisions and impulses that propel people towards and from relationships. Garner is a middle aged woman when she marries V (Murray Bail) during this period of the diaries. She has a fully fledged life in Melbourne, a grown daughter, friends, a working life. V lives in Sydney, initially he is married, and he has very definite views about how life should be lived.
I identified with so many of the questions that circle through the writing: What does it mean to be in a relationship? What can you keep of your single life and what do you wish to throw away? How wonderful it is when you are with someone who is interesting, loving, nourishing. But how do you accommodate different ways of being/seeing? It’s quite emotionally raw (albeit polished in terms of the actual writing).
In 1993, Garner said to an interviewer: “Marriage is an institution that is not set up with the welfare of women in mind ..It’s a very, very powerful urge in people, the urge to marry, and I think that to remain ‘a tough talking radical’ in the face of deep human needs and huge sacrifices that people are knowingly willing to make would be blind.” (quoted in the Brennan biography, p75)
Two important things happen in this diary – she marries V and moves to Sydney and, at the end of this period, she publishes the First Stone. These things are connected. It is clear from the diaries that her confidence about her fiction writing is shaken. She is not a writer like V – and he clearly doesn’t rate the type of writing that she does. “I asked V what he ‘really thought’ of my work. He said he thought it was very good but that I should get beyond the subject matter that limited me, ‘those households, what are they called? That you always write about?” (1992) And “In one hilarious scene, Garner cleans the bathroom while V stands at the door advising her to stop writing about that “bullshit” period, the 1970s, and she responds that the portrayal of relations between men and women in his work feels like the 1950s rather than the “no place” and “no time” he believes it to be.”
In 1989 she writes: “Alice Munro is deceptively naturalistic. All that present tense, detail of clothes, household matters, then two or three pages in there’s a gear change and everything gets deeper, more wildly resonant. She doesn’t answer the questions she makes you ask. She wants you to walk away anxious.” (1989) Earlier on, after watching a French film, she realises that the style is something that she can emulate: “…short stabs, little explanation, textual silence… Garner creates a series of intense moments or reflections and separates them. Meaning is generated and resonates across the space and time of the blank page.” (quoted in the Brennan biography, p54) This is what the diary-reading experience is – in spades.
She begins to make more of a living from reviews and non-fiction newspaper articles. She’s influenced by writers such as Janet Malcolm. The struggle to work out what it is she wants to say in The First Stone is solved when she realises that she can include her own ambivalences and furies, rebuffs and struggles as part of the narrative.
But most importantly, the diaries are about the intimate collisions of a relationship. I kept urging her to leave V – he comes across as such a domineering narcissist in this diary. He can’t stand noise while he is working so Garner needs to leave home each day and stay away until the end of the day while he works on his novel (“Eucalyptus”). He made me so angry – but the arm-wrestle between them made compelling and voyeuristic reading.
July 30, 2023
The most amazing thing about this volume of Helen Garner’s journals (1987 to 1995) is how even a woman as fiercely intelligent and wickedly insightful as she, can be gaslit and bullied into meek submission and crippling self doubt by the man she loves. It seems hard to believe that Murray Bail - author of Eucalyptus - is such a total twat. (I was tempted to use the “C” word there - after all, he is a man of letters) If I didn’t have complete trust in Garner as a reliable narrator I swear, I would have assumed Bail was an invention, a parody - a pompous caricature - like something out of “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Garner’s usual clear-eyed, unfaltering voice is muffled this time around - beneath the weight of Bail’s outrageously outdated patriarchal view of the world (and more specifically literature), the barrage of opinionated twaddle he shouts over the top of anything Helen has to offer, and the vicious hand grenades of faint praise he’s forever lobbing at her about her work. Given his overwrought reactions to even the slightest of Garner’s attempts to make their living arrangements more equitable (for instance: permission to set foot in their home during office hours when Bail MIGHT be writing his Great Australian Novel) I can only imagine how he responded when this book was published and he realised the depiction of him was brutally unsanitized. I actually found myself pitying the poor woman and that’s something i never imagined feeling for such an outstanding literary icon.
I guess, given the tumultuous period it covers, the fact that Garner maintains the same laser-focused self examination and unfiltered insights into her innermost demons is even more astonishing than usual.
But I just hope Helen finds a bit more inner piece in the next journal instalment. And maybe even a half-decent bloke who’ll look after her and support her and recognise her staggering talent. And who’s not a complete unadulterated TOOL. Otherwise she’ll just have to come and live with me.
I guess, given the tumultuous period it covers, the fact that Garner maintains the same laser-focused self examination and unfiltered insights into her innermost demons is even more astonishing than usual.
But I just hope Helen finds a bit more inner piece in the next journal instalment. And maybe even a half-decent bloke who’ll look after her and support her and recognise her staggering talent. And who’s not a complete unadulterated TOOL. Otherwise she’ll just have to come and live with me.
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