Helen Garner Journalist Profile

Articles

The Best Historical Nonfiction Books

1 month ago | fivebooks.com | Truman Capote |Mark O'Connell |Helen Garner |David Grann

Looking at some of the books you’ve chosen today—as well as the ones that you write—I was trying to figure out what genre they are. I think it’s historical nonfiction—but done in a way that really brings the past alive and takes you to a time and place like a novel does. Is that one way of describing it? I love books that tell real stories in a way that’s emotional, sensory, suspenseful. They explore ideas, but also evoke a different time and place.
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025

Jan 7, 2025 | lithub.com | Helen Garner

Natasha Brown, UniversalityRandom House, March 4I adored Brown’s debut, Assembly, a breath of fresh, sharp air in a sea of safe novels, and am therefore very much looking forward to reading her follow-up, in which a young journalist tries to uncover the truth after a young man at a rave is beat half to death with a gold bar. Sounds like fun, but really I’d be interested in anything from this writer, who has an uncommon way of thinking. –ETAgustina Bazterrica, tr.
People laughed at my interest in my grandson’s footy team - but I found it a source of strange bliss | Helen Garner

Nov 22, 2024 | theguardian.com | Helen Garner

I hear a burst of cleats on the concrete behind me and turn in time to see the U16s emerge from the rooms and stride towards the ground. Our boys. My God, they are men, in their vertical stripes and white shorts, even the little skinny ones are men: the groupness of them is what makes them men, moving with purpose in a thick bloc. Why do I feel like crying? What are these tears? What do they mean?
Too Enjoyable to Be Literature

Feb 1, 2024 | theparisreview.org | Helen Garner

By Helen Garner February 1, 2024 I knew nothing about F. Scott Fitzgerald when I stumbled on Tender Is the Night in 1962. I didn’t know he’d struggled with the book for almost nine years, and that during his lifetime it never settled into a finished version.
THE CHILDREN'S BACH

Oct 10, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Helen Garner |Susan Mallery |Barbara Kingsolver

Brilliantly constructed and puzzling in a good way, the way that even our own lives can be puzzling to us. In late-1970s suburban Melbourne, a cluster of family and friends is disrupted by shifting allegiances. This new edition of the short 1984 novel many consider the eminent Australian author's masterpiece has a foreword by Rumaan Alam in which he admits to having a hard time encapsulating its virtues.
Tumultuous Family Stories, Two Ways

Sep 6, 2023 | banoyi.com | Susie Boyt |Helen Garner

Read Like the WindDissolving a marriage; raising a granddaughter. Sept. 9, 2023, 7:50 a.m. ETCredit...Thibault MontamatDear readers,I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but there is one dessert I would walk into traffic for. You might know it under an outrageously continental name, fruit givré, but that’s a baroque way to say “a frozen dessert served in the fruit it’s made of.” Really, it doesn’t have to be fancy.
We Went to Helen Garner’s House

Jul 5, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Helen Garner

This week, she invites us over for cake and conversation about what she’s writing about, how she solves problems and the inspiration she gets from watching her grandson’s footy training. Read TranscriptHelen Garner is writing again. This week, she invites us over for cake and conversation about what she’s writing about, how she solves problems and the inspiration she gets from watching her grandson’s footy training.
The professor’s last lesson

May 25, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Helen Garner |Sean Kelly |Mark McKenna |Margaret Simons

My German neighbour, a retired professor of literature, was very old. His wife, and the few friends they’d had, were dead. I drove across town every Saturday to see him in his aged-care home. His son kept an eye on his clothes and brought him everything he needed, and his daughter, who had made her life on the other side of the world, called him often. Otherwise, I was his only visitor. He was dementing fast.
Helen Garner on happiness: ‘It’s taken me 80 years to figure out it’s not a tranquil, sunlit realm’

Feb 4, 2023 | theguardian.com | Helen Garner

What is happiness, anyway? Does anybody know? It’s taken me 80 years to figure out that it’s not a tranquil, sunlit realm at the top of the ladder you’ve spent your whole life hauling yourself up, rung by rung. It’s more like the thing that Christians call grace: you can’t earn it, you can’t strive for it, it’s not a reward for virtue. It exists all right, it will be given to you, but it’s fluid, it’s evasive, it’s out of reach.