“I think I might burn all these diaries. What if I died and people get hold of them and read them? Their endless self-obsession, anecdotes, self-exiles, rationalizations. Meanness about others.” (p. 412)
I’m usually not that attracted to reading diaries. But Helen Garner’s How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998 (2025) doesn’t sugar-coat Garner’s feelings and thoughts. Helen Garner is a successful Australian writer who has won the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Windham Campbell Literature Prize for nonfiction. In 2019, Garner was honored with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. She has written an intimate chronicle of life, love, family, and the frustrations of writing and aging.
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 possibly a huge mistake). The final volume begins in 1995, as she fights to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her. Garner’s husband tells her he wants a “girl friend.” As you might suspect, this does not go well.
I found these diaries of the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work compelling reading. Helen Garner doesn’t cover up the messy, painful, dark side of love. She doesn’t hide the sheer force of her anger and her judgements of others. Here’s a couple of her judgements:
“Melvyn Bragg interviewed Saul Bellow on TV about The Dean’s December. Bellow grandly puts shit on sociologists, psychologists and criminologists for their failure to cure what’s wrong with society. …I am disappointed and say little. ‘I think,’ says V. ‘you weren’t very interested in what he was talking about.’ …So I say, ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think he’s a windbag.” (p. 401)
“Read The Aspern Papers [Henry James] with joy. Its beauty, its drive, its seriousness but its lightness of touch.” (p. 452)
“Janet Malcolm has reviewed The First Stone [1995] in the New Yorker. Exhilarating, a critique by someone who wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap. …Then I felt thrilled to bits: she has read me. …(Also, she used the expression, ‘this extraordinary book’.) (p. 672)
Helen Garner is 82 years old now and writes little. But these diaries capture the energy, excitement, disappointments, heartbreak, and thrills of her active Life. It’s quite a roller-coaster ride! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword by Leslie Jamison — ix
Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume 1 1978-1987 — 1
One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries Volume II 1987-1995 — 257
How to End a Story: Diaries Volume III 1995-1998 — 559
I’m with her on “The Aspern Papers”—one of the most perfect short stories (novellas?) ever.
Deb, Henry James hit it out of the park with “The Aspern Papers.” You and Helen Garner have excellent taste in Literature!
I agree.
Unlike George, I have always liked diaries and have read a bunch of them over the years. Who was the guy who published a collection of his diaries over a 50 year period? I never heard of her before, but it does sound interesting. I read Harold Nicolson’s three volumes after buying the paperbacks in England many years ago. Looks like I got them in 1974. Also read Anne Morrow Lindbergh and many travel diaries, like Graham Greene’s.
Jeff, I’ve read Graham Greene’s travel diaries. I tend to prefer diaries where the writer deals with the craft of writing. Helen Garner does a bit of that, but then includes a lot of romantic entanglements…
This interests me very much. Thanks. I loved May Sarton’s many books about her life, her garden, etc.
Patti, Helen Garner is quite a character. You’ll enjoy her complicated Life.