Helen Garner - One Day Ill Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995

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 WindhamCampbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premiers Book Award. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Childrens Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look and Yellow Notebook.

Helen Garners second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work.

With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with anotherhow to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work and the enduring value of friendship.

ALSO BY HELEN GARNER

FICTION

Monkey Grip

Honour & Other Peoples Children

The Childrens Bach

Postcards from Surfers

Cosmo Cosmolino

The Spare Room

Stories

NON-FICTION

The First Stone

The Feel of Steel

Joe Cinques Consolation

This House of Grief

Everywhere I Look

True Stories

Yellow Notebook

FILM SCRIPTS

The Last Days of Chez Nous

Two Friends

PRAISE FOR HELEN GARNER

AND YELLOW NOTEBOOK

In some ways, the diaries are the apotheosis of her entire career, and the most exciting thing she has ever published. Literary Hub

A crafted work of autobiographical glimpses, acute observations and insights into the writers psycheEven in private her sentences sing with a strong, clear voice.Australian

Yellow Notebook is as replete as it is spare. It is brimful of a life that needs to be taken a sip at a time to enjoy all its flavoursThere is so much wisdom in this book that we can be grateful that Garner has decided to share it around. Age

The sensory nature of her observations is glorious. Guardian

Yellow Notebook has the power of great fiction that the finest poetry has. Saturday Paper

Reading these snatches of life being lived is like being given a painting you love gleaming with the still-wet paint. Helen Elliott

The sharpest of observers capturing with nuance and detail the most telling interactions between friends, siblings, lovers and society. Canberra Times

The pleasure of the book is Garners eyethe momentary event, the instants feel, the texture of timeA book of heart-wrenching break-ups, growing friendships, tears and celebrations. Stuff.co.nz

Dont mistake Helen Garners Yellow Notebook for something sensational to read in the train, as an Oscar Wilde heroine characterised her own diaries. Garners are spare, quiet, reflective: a portrait of the artist and her world, observed with scrupulous honesty. Brenda Niall

One of Australias greatest writers at her most raw, unedited, and brilliantYellow Notebook is both entirely ordinary, and completely transfixing. Good Reading

Full of Helen Garners trademark acerbic wit and razor-sharp observations, this is the sort of book you can either read in parts or let it wash over you all at once.Booktopia

Severe, unbending, falling about at the absurdity of the worldHelen Garner emerges as a moralist rippling with intent and mirth. The diary, clearly, is her true mtier. And now we have successive volumes to anticipate. Australian Book Review

PRAISE FOR HELEN GARNER

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

Garner is a natural storyteller. James Wood, New Yorker

This is the power of Garners 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

Helen Garner [is] our greatest contemporary practitioner of observation, self-interrogation and compassion. Everything she writes, in her candid, graceful prose, rings true, enlightens, stays. Joan London

Her use of language is sublime. Scotsman

Garners 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 trainmomentarily, distinct and tantalising in their beauty. New York Times

Theres no denying the force of her storytelling. Telegraph

Garner is one of those wonderful writers whose voice one hears and whose eyes one sees through. Her style, conversational but never slack, is natural, supple and exact, her way of seeing is acute and sympathetic, you receive an instant impression of being in the company of a congenial friend and it is impossible not to follow her as she brings to life the events and feelings she is exploring. Diana Athill

A voice of great honesty and energy. Anne Enright

Scrupulously objective and profoundly personal. Kate Atkinson

Garners spare, clean style flowers into magnificent poetry. Australian Book Review

She has a Jane Austenlike ability to whizz an arrow straight into the truest depths of human nature, including her own. Life Sentence

Compassionate and dispassionate in equal measureShe writes with a profound understanding of human vulnerability, and of the subtle workings of love, memory and remorse.Economist

Garners 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

She watches, imagines, second-guesses, empathises, agonises. Her voiceintimate yet sharp, wry yet urgentinspires trust. Atlantic

Garners writing [is] so assured and compassionate that any reader will be enthralled and swept along. Books+Publishing

The words almost dance off the page. Launceston Examiner

Garner is a beautiful writer who winkles out difficult emotions from difficult hiding places. Sunday Telegraph

Garner writes with a fearsome, uplifting grace. Metro UK

A combination of wit and lyricism that is immensely alluring. Observer

Honest, unsparing and brave. New York Times