Download or read book Cosmo Cosmolino Text Classics written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode amid the smashing of ukeleles, an unexpected ascension of an angel, and a sudden shower of jonquils.

Download or read book Honour Other People s Children written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two novellas about the deep connections we forge with the people we love, and the pain of breaking those connections. In Honour, Kathleen and Frank are amicably separated, in contact through shared parenting of their young daughter, Flo. But when Frank finds a new partner and wants a divorce, Kathleen is hurt. And Flo can’t understand why they all can’t live together. In Other People’s Children, Ruth and Scotty live in a big share house that’s breaking up. Scotty is trying to hold on, remembering the early days of telling life stories and laughter and singing—and when the kids were everyone’s kids. But now the bitterness has crept in and their friendship is broken. Ruth is ready to move on—and she’ll take her kids with her. 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 Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. Her book of essays Everywhere I Look won the 2017 Indie Book Award for Non-Fiction. ‘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.’ James Wood, New Yorker ‘She drills into experience and comes up with such clean, precise distillations of life, once you read them they enter into you. Successive generations of writers have felt the keen influence of her work and for this reason Garner has become part of us all.’ Weekend Australian ‘Helen Garner’s collections of fiction and non-fiction corroborate her reputation as a great stylist and a great witness.’ Peter Craven, Australian

Download or read book Monkey Grip written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-29 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece—the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs, and sex. When Nora falls in love with Javo, she is caught in the web of his addiction; and as he moves between loving her and leaving, between his need for her and promises broken, Nora’s life becomes an intense dance of loving and trying to let go. Helen Garner is one of Australia’s finest authors. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Her novels include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Spare Room. I rolled and rolled in the water, deafening my ears while I thought of, and discarded, all the reasons why I shouldn’t go. I popped up, hanging on to the rail, hair streaming on my neck. ‘OK. I’ll come.’ Javo was looking at me. So, afterwards, it is possible to see the beginning of things, the point at which you had already plunged in, while at the time you thought you were only testing the water with your toe. ‘Garner is a natural storyteller.’ James Wood, New Yorker ‘Her use of language is sublime.’ Scotsman ‘This is the power of Garner’s writing. She drills into experience and comes up with such clean, precise distillations of life, once you read them they enter into you. Successive generations of writers have felt the keen influence of her work and for this reason Garner has become part of us all.’ Australian ‘Its embattled characters are so real that by the last page you feel not just that you have read a magnificent novel but that you have experienced life itself.’ The Times on The Spare Room 'What Garner offers in these novels is an alternative to the cloying metafiction of the late 20th century and the washed-out realism of the 21st. They are undeniably of their time – the 1970s commitment to the liberating possibilities of sex, drugs and communal living in Monkey Grip, the hangover nursed in the 1980s in The Children’s Bach – but they also belong to a literary epoch we think of as long gone, as they earnestly strive to resurrect a modernist art of estrangement.' London Review of Books

Download or read book Stories written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Garner is a natural storyteller.’ James Wood, New Yorker This handsome edition of Helen Garner’s collected short fiction celebrates the seventy-fifth birthday of one of Australia’s most loved authors. These stories—that delve into the complexities of love and longing, of the pain, darkness and joy of life—are all told with her characteristic sharpness of observation, honesty and humour. Each one a perfect piece, together they showcase Garner’s mastery of the form. 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. Garner won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction for Postcards from Surfers, and the Victorian and Queensland Premiers’ Awards, as well as the Barbara Jefferis Award, for her novel The Spare Room. Everywhere I Look won the 2017 Indie Book Award for Non Fiction. ‘Garner’s stories share characteristics of the postcard: they flash before us carefully recorded images that remind us of harsher realities not pictured. And like postcards they are economically written, a bit of conversation is transcribed, a memory recalled, an event noted, scenes pass as if viewed from a train—momentarily, distinct and tantalising in their beauty.’ New York Times ‘A perfect introduction for first-timers who have not yet experienced the pleasures of Garner’s writing.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘Stories and True Stories are handsome companion volumes deservedly celebrating Helen Garner, our greatest contemporary practitioner of observation, self-interrogation and compassion. Everything she writes, in her candid, graceful prose, rings true, enlightens, stays.’ Joan London, Sydney Morning Herald’s Year in Reading ‘Published in beautiful editions to celebrate life given shape in words.’ Drusilla Modjeska, Sydney Morning Herald’s Year in Reading ‘Both of these books are concerned with moments of heartbreak and of hope, with loneliness and love, and with great cruelties, and the things that drive people to them. They are animated by a desire to understand what seems unfathomable, and to pay attention to the small pleasures of the everyday. Garner's precise descriptions, her interest in minute shifts of emotion, and the ways in which we reveal ourselves to others are always at work in these books, and make them a real joy to read.’ Age ‘As I leaf through the volumes, having just re-read both of them, I am still brought up short by another revelatory insight of the everyday...I could go on and on, but I am out of words. Many happy returns Helen Garner!’ Adelaide Advertiser ‘Her prose is wiry, stark, precise, but to find her equal for the tone of generous humanity one has to call up writers like Isaac Babel and Anton Chekhov.’ Wall Street Journal

Download or read book The Cardboard Crown Text Classics written by Martin Boyd and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Download or read book The Children s Bach written by Helen Garner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-10-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Now in a new edition with a foreword by Rumaan Alam, a modern classic from one of Australia’s greatest writers • "It’s high time American readers knew her generous, category-defying imagination."—New York Times "The Children’s Bach is [Garner’s] masterpiece."—Public Books Set in suburban Melbourne in the early 1980s, The Children’s Bach centers on Dexter and Athena Fox, their two sons, and the insulated world they’ve built together. Despite the routine challenges of domestic life, they are largely happy. But when a friend from Dexter’s past resurfaces and introduces the couple to the city’s bohemian underground—unbound by routine and driven by desire—Athena begins to wonder if life might hold more for her, and the tenuous bonds that tie the Foxes together start to fray. A literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s perfectly formed novels embody the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Drawn on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, The Children’s Bach is “a jewel” (Ben Lerner) within Garner’s revered catalogue, a beloved work that solidified her place among the masters of modern letters, a finely etched masterpiece that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.

Download or read book The First Stone written by Helen Garner and published by Picador Australia. This book was released on 1995 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling title in which the author examines the issue of sexual harassment through the true story of two women who accused the master of Ormond College, University of Melbourne, of indecent assault. The book focuses on Garner's personal response to the event and greater issues of sex and power. The author has written many acclaimed novels and short stories, including 'Monkey Grip' and 'The Last Days of Chez Nous'.

Download or read book The Plains Text Classics written by Gerald Murnane and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999. Introduction by Wayne Macauley. There is no book in Australian literature like The Plains. In the two decades since its first publication, this haunting novel has earned its status as a classic. A nameless young man arrives on the plains and begins to document the strange and rich culture of the plains families. As his story unfolds, the novel becomes, in the words of Murray Bail, ‘a mirage of landscape, memory, love and literature itself’. Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has been a primary teacher, an editor and a university lecturer. His debut novel, Tamarisk Row (1974), was followed by ten other works of fiction, including The Plains and most recently Border Districts. In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He lives in western Victoria. Wayne Macauley is the author of three novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004), Caravan Story (2007) and The Cook (2011), and the short fiction collection Other Stories (2010). He lives in Melbourne. ‘Murnane is quite simply one of the finest writers we have produced.’ Peter Craven ‘A distinguished, distinctive, unforgettable novel.’ Shirley Hazzard ‘Gerald Murnane is unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today and The Plains is a fascinating and rewarding book...The writing is extraordinarily good, spare, austere, strong, often oddly moving.’ Australian ‘A piece of imaginative writing so remarkably sustained that it is a subject for meditation rather than a mere reading...In the depths and surfaces of this extraordinary fable you will see your inner self eerily reflected again and again.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘The Plains has that peculiar singularity that can make literature great.’ Ed Wright, Australian, Best Books of 2015 ‘Murnane touches on foibles and philosophy, plays with the makings of a fable or allegory, and all the while toys with tone, moving easily from earnest to deadpan to lightly ironic, a meld of Buster Keaton, the Kafka of the short stories, and Swift in A Modest Proposal...A provocative, delightful, diverting must-reread.’ STARRED Review, Kirkus Reviews ‘Known for its sharp yet defamiliarizing take on the landscape and an aesthetic of purity historically associated with it, The Plains is uniformly described as a masterpiece of Australian literature. Look closer, though, and it's a haunting nineteenth-century novel of colonial violence captured inside the machine's test-pattern image—a distant, unassuming house on the plains.’ BOMB

Download or read book The Mystery of a Hansom Cab written by Fergus Hume and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early work by Fergus Hume was originally published in 1886 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Mystery of a Hansom Cab' is a tricky tale set in Australia and is Hume's most famous crime novel. Fergusson Wright Hume was born on 8th July 1859 in England, the second son of Dr. James Hume. The family migrated to New Zealand where Fergus was enrolled at Otago Boys' High School, and later continued his legal and literary studies at the University of Otago. Hume returned to England in 1888 where he resided in London for a few years until moving to the Essex countryside. There he published over 100 novels, mainly in the mystery fiction genre, though none had the success of his début work.

Download or read book The Watch Tower Text Classics written by Elizabeth Harrower and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Harrower's greatest novel [is] The Watch Tower (1966), the bitter story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who lose their parents and fall under the sway of Felix Shaw, an abusive and controlling drunk...[It is] her masterpiece.’ James Wood, New Yorker After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control. Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power. Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two. 'Haunting and delicate.' Kirkus Reviews 'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Washington Post 'Haunting...Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian ‘Each of Harrower’s four novels is concerned with entrapment of one sort or another, through family or youth or love. But The Watch Tower, her last novel, is almost like a distillation in its vision of the forces of good and evil. Something runs clear and strong through this wonderful, painful novel, the dark and the light. The victim and the survivor. Suffering and joy. The knowledge of both. Reality.’ Joan London, Lit Hub 'Elizabeth Harrower's thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Tower comes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature's most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.' Helen Garner, Australian 'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Michelle de Kretser, The Monthly 'I read The Watch Tower with a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down...Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian ‘To create a monster as continually credible, comic and nauseating as Felix is a feat of a very high order. But to control that creation, as Miss Harrower does, so that Clare remains the centre of interest is an achievement even more rare. The Watch Tower is a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.’ H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1966 ‘As gripping and terrifying as any horror story...An astonishing book.’ Guardian

Download or read book They re A Weird Mob Text Classics written by Nino Culotta and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just off the boat from Italy, Nino Culotta arrives in Sydney. He thought he spoke English but he’s never heard anything like the language these Australians are speaking. They’re a Weird Mob is an hilarious snapshot of the immigrant experience in Menzies-era Australia, by a writer with a brilliant ear for the Australian way with words.

Download or read book One Day I ll Remember This written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this second volume of diaries from one of Australia’s greatest writers, we see Garner in love; asking herself questions about relationships, individuality, morality and contentment. For readers of Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women, and avid Garner fans, this volume illuminates the inner life of a writer with all its turmoil and joy.

Download or read book How to End a Story written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third instalment of diaries from the inimitable Helen Garner covers four eventful years in the life of one of Australia’s most treasured writers.

Download or read book Life and Adventures 1776 1801 Text Classics written by John Nicol and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1822, this is the extraordinary story of John Nicol, a sailor who circled the globe twice, fought Napoleon’s navy, was in Hawaii just after Cook’s death, and went to Port Jackson on a Second Fleet vessel with its cargo of female convicts.

Download or read book The Spare Room written by Helen Garner and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2009-02-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of several prestigious prizes, The Spare Room is extraordinary writer Helen Garner's intense, moving investigation of the boundaries and limits of a lifelong friendship.As the novel opens, Helen lovingly prepares the spare room in her home for her dear friend Nicola, who is coming to visit for three weeks while receiving controversial treatment for late-stage cancer. From the moment Nicola staggers off the plane, gaunt and hoarse but still somehow grand, Helen becomes her nurse, her guardian angel, and her stony judge. The Spare Room tells an unforgettable story full of complex humour, rage, and compassion.

Download or read book Everywhere I Look written by Helen Garner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Garner is one of Australia’s greatest writers. Her short non-fiction has enormous range. Spanning fifteen years of work, Everywhere I Look is a book full of unexpected moments, sudden shafts of light, piercing intuition, flashes of anger and incidental humour. It takes us from backstage at the ballet to the trial of a woman for the murder of her newborn baby. It moves effortlessly from the significance of moving house to the pleasure of re-reading Pride and Prejudice. Everywhere I Look includes Garner’s famous and controversial essay on the insults of age, her deeply moving tribute to her mother and extracts from her diaries, which have been part of her working life for as long as she has been a writer. Everywhere I Look glows with insight. It is filled with the wisdom of life. Helen Garner is an award-winning author of novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her novel The Spare Room, published in 2008, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction and the Barbara Jefferis Award, and has been translated into many languages. ‘Garner is a charming and courageous writer whose distinctive voice exemplifies the range of what is possible in personal writing.’ Publishers Weekly ‘There’s not a word wasted or out of place. Garner observes, intuits, shares and cares about the lives she writes about like no-one else. Readers will laugh, cry, squirm and gasp and wonder. It’s Garner’s unique gift as a writer, and it’s beautifully realised in Everywhere I Look.’ Books&Publishing ‘[Garner] has a way of describing the world with such wisdom and candour and, sometimes, delight, that it takes one’s breath away...at least, it does mine. Her observations about life are refreshing in their honesty...This is a fine collection that offers many delights to the reader.’ Readings ‘Similar to a hike, the book is best enjoyed without straining to finish it. It’s full of moments to pause and reflect. More importantly, it stirs up that addictive, expansive feeling only the best books can achieve: that you have reached the final page changed, perhaps even a better and more thoughtful person from having travelled alongside Garner’s observations for a time.’ Daily Review ‘Garner’s prose is so very pleasant to read—dry, relaxed sentences that calmly reach out towards loveliness...[Her] willingness to look at and truly see the failures of human behaviour, in herself no less than in others, that lends her work its power.’ Guardian ‘It is a rich, beautiful book by a poet of the everyday, a sheer master of prose. Give it to your grandmother, give it to your tweeting girlfriend. Give it to any man or woman who understands the magic of language. It will hurl them into great gulfs of pleasure, of turmoil and understanding and joy.’ Australian ‘Garner’s style celebrates and enacts containment and minimalism...Its tenderness and brutality cultivate fruitful and interesting kitchen table conversations spanning the grace and indignity of being “all too human.”’ Age/Sydney Morning Herald ‘[Garner’s] writing expresses a hard-won grace. It brings you closer to the world, and shows you how to love it...She has laid the groundwork for a generation of writers; she has repeatedly shown us the glory and the power of an English sentence.’ Monthly ‘Garner approaches core questions about leading a meaningful life, providing baby boomers in particular with examples of how to live thoughtfully and observantly.’ Library Journal ‘A mesmerising collection of essays and diary entries, this is a book to savour and re-read. No one else writes with as much insight, clarity and humour. The diary entries in particular are a treat: tiny fragments of life brilliantly observed and beautifully crafted by one of Australia’s greatest writers.’ Best Non-Fiction Books of 2016, Readings ‘There are very few writers whose personal essays seem to depend and widen on a second or even a third or fourth read, but Helen Garner is one of them. Her style is inimitable, for while its elegance is undeniable, its essence is pre-verbal, grounded in her intense and unique ways of looking and seeing.’ Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review, 2016 Books of the Year ‘Everywhere I Look was a pure delight...Her view on things is unpredictable, distinctive, and original.’ Mark Rubbo, Australian Book Review, 2016 Books of the Year ‘A generous collection of pitch-perfect sketches and reviews, each one taking us with her as she looks, really looks, at the world around her and registers her response to it.’ Susan Sheridan, Australian Book Review, 2016 Books of the Year ‘Garner is a wonderful appreciator: she invites us into the work under review by leading us along the path of discovery she has followed...Her strongest essays evoke emotion through reticence and suggestiveness. They hint at depth of thought and feeling but never become ponderous. And they reveal both the writer and the world by inviting us into her thoughts so that we can see what she sees. Her successes and her failures show just how hard it for an essayist to answer the question of why we should care – why are personal essays something we might want to spend time on anyway? Her best pieces answer this question: we read them because of the richness of perspective they offer. In them, we see not only a small piece of the world, but also the writer looking at the world and looking back at us, asking us to spend some time gazing at it all right there with her.’ Open Letters Monthly ‘The light of Helen Garner’s piercing observation shines on parents, friends, books, time, the weather, and herself. It’s impossible not to trust these engrossing dispatches in their passion and honesty. A lifetime of looking and taking note, and the hard work of examining the significance of what is seen and felt, make this a masterly collection of essays by our greatest non-fiction writer.’ Joan London, The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald ‘Everywhere I Look, like everything in Garner’s oeuvre, brims with clear-eyed insights and crystalline prose. No other writer distils quite like she does.’ Jacinta Halloran, The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald ‘There are times when Helen Garner is the only author I want to read. Restlessly honest, with a sharp eye for detail, her style is by some rare art at once crystalline and conversational. Everywhere I Look is a memorable essay collection.’ Lisa Gorton, The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald ‘Reading this collection of essays is like having a long conversation with a clever, funny, big-hearted, magnificently acerbic friend. It left me astonished all over again by Garner’s deft handling of whatever subject she chooses. There are pieces here that crackle and fizz with the pleasure she takes in her grandchildren, reading, a good martini, and playing the ukulele...Everywhere I Look made me laugh, cry, and think. It is a book to return to again and again with gratitude.’ Best Books of 2016, Radio National ‘The no-bullshit-preamble rule is sparklingly employed...Garner is a natural storyteller: her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive...What gives the memoir its power, as so often in Garner’s writing, is that she is unsparing, in equal measure, of her subject and of herself, and that she so relishes complicated feelings...[Everywhere I Look] is made singular by Garner’s almost reckless honesty, and brought alive by her mortal details.’ James Wood, New Yorker ‘It’s no wonder Garner won a major international award, the $US150,000 Yale-based Wyndham-Campbell Prize, for her non-fiction writing this year. You just have to read this collection of essays, diary entries and true stories spanning the past 20 years to recognise her immense talent.’ Best Books of 2016, Australian Financial Review ‘Her writing is elegant and spare, the kind of writing that leaves you wrecked at the end. It’s what makes me feel like I’m peeking in her diary when I read the most personal entries in this collection.’ Pop.Edit.Lit. ‘Spanning 15 years, this varied collection of short non-fiction pieces presents some of Helen Garner’s best work. Whether it’s a dig into her own life or a broader look into societal whims and ills, Helen Garner is one of our most skilled essayists.’ Best Books of 2016, Sydney Morning Herald ‘Helen Garner’s Everywhere I Look is not quite a memoir, but there is a keen personal element to this collection of short nonfiction pieces. Garner has just received an outstanding general review from James Wood in the New Yorker. It’s long overdue.’ Australian ‘Whenever I see Garner I try to act normal but inside, some part of me is always squealing IT'S HELEN GARNER!!! Her new book, Everywhere I Look, is masterful, like everything she writes.’ Leigh Sales, ABC News ‘This book brims with Garner’s wit and wisdom.’ Best Books of 2016, Sunday Life ‘Helen Garner’s Everywhere I Look is like having a backstage pass into the mind, notebooks and creative process of one of Australia’s very best writers.’ Andy Griffiths, Best Books of 2016, Guardian ‘For years, Garner has offered me a model for journalism: a careful observer, she also tells us how those observations change her as well as the subjects of her gaze. Garner reveals her nervous system—but also the dubious games and improvisations of journalism. Everywhere I Look is a collection of Garner’s essays and diary entries from the past 15 years. She writes on friendship, ageing, film and literature. In ‘The Journey of the Stamp Animals’, she writes of rediscovering a children’s book that—many years earlier—had seemed so stuffed with illicit magic. Now an adult, this long dreamt-of book in her hands again, she finds the pleasure of having her memory—so often fickle and corruptible—vindicated. The book is as she remembered. It’s a measure of Garner’s talent that this small, obscure triumph carries the feeling of profundity.’ Martine McKenzie-Murray, Best Books of 2016, Guardian ‘If you are looking for a voice to speak to you frankly and with humour and warmth about important things, here is the writer for you. Well-known in Australia as a novelist and screenwriter and reporter, Garner is also one of the world’s best essayists. Here she is thinking about the indignities of how people treat the ageing, the pleasures of a ukulele, grandfathering, and some of her best friends, who she sketches with a master’s economy of gesture. Once you start reading Garner you will wonder what the huge space inside your head she occupies used to be there for.’ John Freeman, Best Books of 2016, Literary Hub ‘A collection of essays and journal entries which include everything from a carefully observed portrait of Rosie Batty to ‘The Insults of Age’, where she details the ways in which older women are disregarded and disrespected but with a confessional twist. For me, the best parts are the snippets from her diary and particularly her observations of being an irritated but besotted grandmother. Garner is one of those generous women writers who is prepared to share with you her less redeeming moments in an act of intimacy and empathy with the reader. You won't always agree with Garner's conclusions but how she approaches a question is always interesting.’ Feminist Reading Picks of 2016, Age ‘She covers topics that others are really afraid of, that really penetrate the human condition, which is something I admire and that has inspired me in my own work.’ Virginia Haussegger, Sydney Morning Herald ‘There are very few writers whose personal essays seem to deepen and widen on a second or even a third or fourth read, but Helen Garner is one of them. Her style is inimitable, for while its elegance is undeniable, its essence is pre-verbal, grounded in her intense and unique ways of looking and seeing. Everywhere I Look seems the ideal title for her 2016 essay collection.’ Kerryn Goldsworthy, Best Books of 2016, Australian Book Review ‘Pure delight. It showcases Garner’s distinctive voice and her take on the world around her. Her view on things is unpredictable, distinctive, and original.’ Mark Rubbo, Best Books of 2016, Australian Book Review ‘Garner’s Everywhere I Look is a generous collection of pitch-perfect sketches and reviews, each one taking us with her as she looks, really looks, at the world around her and registers her response to it.’ Susan Sheridan, Best Books of 2016, Australian Book Review ‘It made me cry and laugh and think. Garner always reminds me of the power of noticing and the impact of sparse writing.’ Leigh Sales ‘This collection of essays by one of Australia’s best known authors has the sharp steel edge characteristic of all of Garner’s work. Observations are cobbled together in an almost conversational way, stopping and starting, dealing in trivialities and family moments. Woven amongst the everyday, there are recollections of grief; a father’s death, a friend’s funeral, the heartbreak of being in love with a married man. Garner’s gimlet eye is as revealing and clear as ever.’ Sydney Scoop ‘Garner shows us something precious and endangered...the nexus of neighbourhoods and neighbourliness, the simple weatherboard houses and the plain local shops in the suburbs of Fitzroy and Moonee Ponds. In the most ordinary suburb, as in the most extraordinary marine wilderness, what lies beneath is as fascinating as life on the surface.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Everywhere I Look is a book full of unexpected moments, sudden shafts of light, piercing intuition, flashes of anger and incidental humour.’ Perth Writers Festival, Summer Reading Guide

Download or read book Joe Cinque s Consolation written by Helen Garner and published by Picador Australia. This book was released on 2007-11-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A true story of death, grief and the law from the 2019 winner of the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests-most of them university students-had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care. It is a masterwork from one of Australia's greatest writers. Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime 2005 Winner of the ABIA Book of the Year 2004 PRAISE FOR JOE CINQUE'S CONSOLATION "Garner's book is a writer's profound response to a tragedy and to questions about human responsibility over time as well as at precise moments" The Age "This is a work of great passion and of countervailing humanity - a book of witness..." Australian Book Review