‘Garner is a fascinating companion on the page’ THE TIMES
‘Her piercing intellect, fearlessness and compassion shine through in every word’ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Helen Garner’s work is a thrilling discovery’ DUA LIPA
Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most widely loved and critically acclaimed authors. She has published classic novels, true crime narratives, scripts, diaries, stories and plays. But, between it all, she paid the bills with journalism.
True Stories collects the revered Australian writer’s short non-fiction written over a period of almost fifty years. In its pages, Garner visits the morgue and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, gets the sack for teaching her students about sex, attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning fifty, about days spent in courtrooms following murder trials.
The result is an intoxicating, masterly collection of short non-fiction pieces, united by Garner’s trademark honesty, humility and humour. A perfect companion to Garner’s Baillie Gifford Prize-winning diaries How to End a Story, True Stories gives further insight into the life, mind and notebooks of a brilliant writer.
‘A born noticer, someone on whom nothing is lost’ COLM TÓIBÍN
‘One of Australia’s finest writers’ OBSERVER
‘Garner’s unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive’ NEW YORKER
‘Her piercing intellect, fearlessness and compassion shine through in every word’ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Helen Garner’s work is a thrilling discovery’ DUA LIPA
Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most widely loved and critically acclaimed authors. She has published classic novels, true crime narratives, scripts, diaries, stories and plays. But, between it all, she paid the bills with journalism.
True Stories collects the revered Australian writer’s short non-fiction written over a period of almost fifty years. In its pages, Garner visits the morgue and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, gets the sack for teaching her students about sex, attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning fifty, about days spent in courtrooms following murder trials.
The result is an intoxicating, masterly collection of short non-fiction pieces, united by Garner’s trademark honesty, humility and humour. A perfect companion to Garner’s Baillie Gifford Prize-winning diaries How to End a Story, True Stories gives further insight into the life, mind and notebooks of a brilliant writer.
‘A born noticer, someone on whom nothing is lost’ COLM TÓIBÍN
‘One of Australia’s finest writers’ OBSERVER
‘Garner’s unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive’ NEW YORKER
Reviews
In one of the essays in this marvellous book, Garner remarks that when she looks back at her body of work, her books "stand up in the landscape" behind her, while her nonfiction writing and her journalism - and here is almost fifty years worth of it, collected into a single volume - form the "dense, prickly undergrowth". Prickly she is, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued too, but whether she is writing about sex, death, family, violent crime or the films of Russell Crowe, she is also deeply empathetic, witty and eloquent