How to End a Story
€24.00
Strewn with devastating honesty, sparkling humour and steel-sharp wit, these expertly arranged volumes offer a window into the life and work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers. Helen Garner’s collected diaries span 20 years, with the first volume beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her debut novel ‘Monkey Grip’. The second volume begins in 1987 as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and the final volume in 1995, as she fights to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her. Shockingly relatable and forensically observed, these diaries reveal the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. In doing so, they uncover the messy, painful, dark side of love, the sheer force of a woman’s anger, the immutable ties of motherhood and the regenerative power of a room of one’s own.
In stock
Ships in 24h
Across Ireland
Click & Collect
Free in Wicklow
Easy returns
Within 30 days
Secure checkout
Stripe protected
'There are very few writers that I admire more than Helen Garner'
DAVID NICHOLLS
'The greatest, richest journals by a writer since Virginia Woolf's'
RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER
'Marvellous, all eight hundred pages of it'
COLM TÃIBÃN
'The great Australian writer's masterpiece'
THE TIMES
Helen Garner has kept a diary for most of her adult life. Now she is widely recognised as one of the greatest writers of our age. But, of all her books, it is her diaries that she likes best.
Collected for the first time into one volume, these inimitable diaries show Garner like never before: as a fledging author in bohemian Melbourne, publishing her lightning-rod debut novel while raising a young daughter in the 1970s; in the throes of an all-consuming love affair in the 1980s; and clinging to a disintegrating marriage in the 1990s.
How to End a Story reveals the inner life of a woman in love, a mother, a friend and a formidable writer at work. Told with devastating honesty, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life, it offers all the satisfactions of a novel alongside the enthralling intimacy of something written in private and just for pleasure.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LESLIE JAMISON
'Acute, rigorous, pitch-perfect'
NIGELLA LAWSON
'With sharp eyes and ears, Garner is a recording angel at life's secular apocalypses'
JAMES WOOD, NEW YORKER
'Dazzling, fearless greatness. I could not recommend this book more'
INDIA KNIGHT
'An acclaimed celebrator of the poetic quotidian'
ANNE ENRIGHT
Additional information
| Weight | 607 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 19.6 × 12.6 × 5 cm |
| Book_author | Garner, Helen |
| Publisher | WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON |
| Imprint | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| Cover | Paperback |
| Pages | 832 |
| Language | English |
| Dewey | 823.914 (edition:23) |
| Readership | General – Trade / Code: K |