Helen Garner

Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love. Nora falls in love with Javo the junkie, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made. But caught in an increasingly ambiguous relationship, they are unable to let go and the harder they pull away from each other, the tighter the monkey grip.

Monkey Grip

Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain. On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father’s Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner’s obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict. In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the courtroom with its actors and audience – all gathered to bear witness to the truth – players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the quest for justice. This House of Grief is a heartbreaking and unputdownable book by one of Australia’s most admired writers.

The Story of a Murder Trial

This House of Grief

"When Helen invites her old friend Nicola to stay in her spare room, she had no idea what she is taking on: for Nicola has cancer, and from the moment she staggers through the front door, imperious, deluded and maddeningly endearing, she turns Helen's life inside out." "In the three weeks that follow, Helen is driven through extremes of rage and tenderness to become Nicola'a nurse, protector, guardian angel and stony judge." "The Spare Room is a novel about the distance a friendship must travel, and the depths it must plumb, when confronted by the threat of death. It is full of wisdom, dark laughter, and truth."--BOOK JACKET.

The Spare Room

Children's Bach

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

Joe Cinque's Consolation

I pedal over to Kensington just after dark. As I roll along the lane towards the railway underpass, a young Asian woman on her way home from the station walks out of the tunnel towards me. After she passes there’s a stillness, a moment of silent freshness that feels like spring. 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.

Everywhere I Look

When two young women students claimed they had been indecently assaulted at a party by the Master of Ormond at Melbourne University, the shock not only split the college and university communities but focused sharply the larger social debate about sexuality and power.

The First Stone

"This House of Grief, in its restraint and control, bears comparison with In Cold Blood."—Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky and Shrines of Gaiety From one of Australia’s most prolific writers comes an engrossing true-crime saga, about a father suspected of murdering his three sons, the trial that gripped a nation, and the brutal spectacle of Australia’s criminal justice system On the evening of September 4, 2005, Father’s Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, in rural Australia. His car veered off the road and plunged into a dam, and the boys, aged ten, seven, and two, drowned. Was this a tragic accident, or an act of revenge? The court case that followed became a national obsession—a macabre parade of witnesses, family members, and the defendant himself, each forced to relive the unthinkable for an audience of millions. Helen Garner, the celebrated writer and master chronicler of Australian life, was equally swept up in Farquharson’s case. In This House of Grief, she tells the definitive and deeply absorbing story of it all, from the moment of the crash to the trial’s final verdict. Garner takes her reader behind oak doors and captures a panorama of perspectives, from the defendant himself, to the team of prosecutors, to the jury. But most crucially, she delves deep into her own perspective as a member of the public, a voyeur peering into a family’s darkest moments, and onto the exacting procedure of Australia’s criminal justice system. The result is richly textured portrait—of a man and his broken life, of a community wracked by tragedy, and of the long and torturous road to closure. Written with Garner’s trademark style—brisk and candid, yet never dismissive of her deeply flawed subjects—This House of Grief is a modern classic and a masterwork of literary journalism.

Misafir Odasi

The Children's Bach

The private diaries of one of Australia's greatest living writers, the much loved, fearless and fierce Helen Garner.

Diaries Volume I 1978–1987

Yellow Notebook

A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law

Selected Non-fiction

True Stories

Rumaan Alam

A Novel

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.

Diaries 1987–1995

One Day I'll Remember This

Lauren Groff

The Collected Short Fiction

Stories

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.

Helen Garner

About

Books

Join the club