There’s Something About Helen

I’ve always enjoyed reading Helen Garner’s works, from the very beginning when my girlfriend Julie gave me the first novel by this gifted writer, Monkey Grip.

Admittedly, her reputation as a crusader or rebel grew with The First Stone, one of her more polemical works. In this work, she leant support to a master at a Melbourne university college, who in 1995 was accused of sexual misconduct towards two female residents. Radical feminists were appalled by her stance.

The main reason for her support, I gathered, was her compassion for the master and his family, over what she saw as a minor incident that could have been handled differently. Instead, he and his family had to suffer the ignominy of his sacking and public disgrace.

It showed up a dichotomy between older and younger feminists.

More recently, I have been part of a book club whose members chose to study Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, set in the seventies in Melbourne. Again there was a polarising effect: we either loved or hated this fictional work based on Helen’s diaries from the time. The book revolves around the lives of members of a communal household and their friends, focusing for the main part on Nora and Javo who are in a co-dependent relationship, he addicted to heroin, she simply love-addicted. They are typical of the hedonistic, often anarchistic, youth that congregated around certain places, such as university campuses, in the 60s and 70s, intent on experimenting with life-styles, drugs and sexual freedom. The strength of the novel is its recording of a social movement at a moment in time that in itself polarised society and widened the generation gap for years to come. Tempers flared during the discussions, one side having only positive things to say about the book, the other side seeing only its flaws. “So honest and brave!” said one side, “A truthful historical account of the 60s and 70s as a poetic/creative era of experimentation, symbolised by the poetry throughout.” “It needs a good editor!” said the other side.

I studied The First Stone by Helen Garner at the University of Technology, Sydney as part of a Master’s degree in Professional Writing. I noticed that there were two camps: those who loved her book, and those who saw her as a traitor of the feminist cause. I was in the former camp, but many of the (younger) women belonged to the other side, along with (I think) the male teacher at the time.

Admittedly, this was one of her more polemical works, in that it dealt with her support of a master at a Melbourne university college, who in 1995 was accused of sexual misconduct towards two female residents. The main reason for her support, I gathered, was her compassion for the master and his family, over what she saw as a minor incident that could have been handled differently. Instead, he and his family had to suffer the ignominy of his sacking and public disgrace.

More recently, I have been part of a book club whose members chose to study Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, set in the seventies in Melbourne. Again there was a polarising effect: we either loved or hated this fictional work based on Helen’s diaries from the time. The book revolves around the lives of members of a communal household and their friends, focusing for the main part on Nora and Javo who are in a co-dependent relationship, he addicted to heroin, she simply love-addicted. They are typical of the hedonistic, often anarchistic, youth that congregated around certain places, such as university campuses, in the 60s and 70s, intent on experimenting with life-styles, drugs and sexual freedom. The strength of the novel is its recording of a social movement at a moment in time that in itself polarised society and widened the generation gap for years to come. Tempers flared during the discussions, one side having only positive things to say about the book, the other side seeing only its flaws. “So honest and brave!” said one side, “A truthful historical account of the 60s and 70s as a poetic/creative era of experimentation, symbolised by the poetry throughout.” ” It needs a good editor!” said the other side.

Another friend who belongs to a book group on the Central Coast also read Garner around the same time as my group. To quote her words exactly, she thinks of Helen Garner more as a friend than as a name on a book cover. “Helen got so used to me lining up for her to sign her latest work that she wrote in one: ‘To Denise, in queue after queue’. Another memorable time I happened to see her in David Jones. Holding a brand new copy of her My Hard Heart and a lot of chutzpa, I approached her to sign it. She wrote on the flypage: ‘To Denise, just before Christmas in the DJ’s knicker department! Warm regards.'”

Related articles

• Helen Garner: The Spare Room (2008)
• Helen Garner on Finding the Right Words