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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'HELEN Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard.
'Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.
'Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume 1, in this elegant hardback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
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This book has been selected for Guardian Australia’s series The Unmissables, highlighting the most notable Australian books of the year.
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Epigraph: 'We are here for this - to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to stand the blows and hand them out.' - Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
y
Lisa Gorton on Helen Garner's Third Volume of Diaries
Peter Rose
(presenter),
2022
23749093
2022
single work
podcast
'‘I would like to write about dominance, revulsion, separation, the horrible struggles between people who love each other,’ wrote Helen Garner, foreshadowing How to End a Story, the final instalment of her published diaries, following Yellow Notebook (2019) and One Day I’ll Remember This (2020). While the first two volumes spanned eight years apiece, How to End a Story spans only three. Starting in 1995, shortly after the release of Garner’s The First Stone, it details the dissolution of her marriage to another writer, V. As Lisa Gorton notes, this volume differs from its precursors both in tone and focus: ‘This one is as compelling as a detective story. This one is edited with the sense of an ending.’ (Production summary)
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A Hard Nut in the Centre
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Inside Story , December 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary ; One Day I'll Remember This : Diaries 1987-1995 2020 single work diary 'A writer’s complex life emerges in Helen Garner’s diaries' -
Diaries : Empirical Evidence and Desire
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary 'All of Helen Garner’s work is intensely personal. But diaries and letters are genres particularly charged with intimacy. On reading the Garner diaries, what came to my mind yet again was a statement from Janet Malcolm: ‘voyeurism’ is one of the impulses behind reading life writing (Malcolm 1994: 9).' (Introduction) -
Summer of Cousins
i
"Melbourne in summer",
2020
single work
poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 22 March vol. 30 no. 6 2020; -
y
Helen Garner's Diaries
The ABR Podcast : Episode 3
Peter Rose
(presenter),
Southbank
:
Australian Book Review, Inc.
,
2020
18599240
2020
single work
podcast
review
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary'ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. [Peter] delves into Garner's own private musings, the diaries she kept during the pivotal years of her writing life.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
-
Helen Garner : Yellow Notebook
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 2-8 November 2019;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary'The myth of Helen Garner’s diaries is immense. When she published Monkey Grip 40-odd years ago, with its riveting depiction of emotional and drug squalors in inner-urban Melbourne, she evoked a world that had never been written about before. But the novel’s heartbreaks and contentments, with its central portrait of Javo the junkie, were accused of being just diaries rehashed as fiction. The alternative view of the Garner diaries is that they constitute her major life’s work: that when they saw the light of day – presumably, people thought, after her death – they would be acknowledged as one of the great journals of lived experience, up there with Pepys and Gide.' (Introduction)
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'To Stand the Blows' : The Flexile Diaries of Helen Garner
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 417 2019; (p. 10-13)
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary 'Anyone who keeps a diary day in, day out for decades knows why Helen Garner, a few years ago, destroyed her early ones, deeming them boring and self-obsessed. Incineration has a long, proud history: think of Henry James, late in life, at his incinerator in Rye, burning all his letters and private papers – that lamentable blaze. The sheer misery and tedium of our early journals can be dejecting. ‘What is the point of this diary?’ Garner asks herself in 1981. ‘There is always something deeper, that I don’t write, even when I think I’m saying everything.’' (Introduction) -
Out of Chaos Comes Form
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 November 2019; (p. 26)
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary'Helen Garner’s diaries reveal a writer full of complexity'
-
y
Helen Garner's Diaries
The ABR Podcast : Episode 3
Peter Rose
(presenter),
Southbank
:
Australian Book Review, Inc.
,
2020
18599240
2020
single work
podcast
review
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary'ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. [Peter] delves into Garner's own private musings, the diaries she kept during the pivotal years of her writing life.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
-
Diaries : Empirical Evidence and Desire
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 2019 single work diary 'All of Helen Garner’s work is intensely personal. But diaries and letters are genres particularly charged with intimacy. On reading the Garner diaries, what came to my mind yet again was a statement from Janet Malcolm: ‘voyeurism’ is one of the impulses behind reading life writing (Malcolm 1994: 9).' (Introduction) -
My Early Diaries Filled Me with so Much Shame I Burned Them. I’m Publishing the Rest
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 30 October 2019;'Revisiting a diary forces you to confront ‘ugly, foolish behaviour’, writes Helen Garner. Pulling together a book of extracts was instructive – but not easy.'
-
Sensory Fragments and Self-doubt: Drawing Back the Curtain on Helen Garner's Mind
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 5 November 2019;'It’s a strange comfort to discover in Yellow Notebook even a writer of Garner’s force has suffered from – and survived – a lack of confidence.' (Introduction)
-
Summer of Cousins
i
"Melbourne in summer",
2020
single work
poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 22 March vol. 30 no. 6 2020; -
y
Lisa Gorton on Helen Garner's Third Volume of Diaries
Peter Rose
(presenter),
2022
23749093
2022
single work
podcast
'‘I would like to write about dominance, revulsion, separation, the horrible struggles between people who love each other,’ wrote Helen Garner, foreshadowing How to End a Story, the final instalment of her published diaries, following Yellow Notebook (2019) and One Day I’ll Remember This (2020). While the first two volumes spanned eight years apiece, How to End a Story spans only three. Starting in 1995, shortly after the release of Garner’s The First Stone, it details the dissolution of her marriage to another writer, V. As Lisa Gorton notes, this volume differs from its precursors both in tone and focus: ‘This one is as compelling as a detective story. This one is edited with the sense of an ending.’ (Production summary)
Awards
- 2020 longlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
- 2020 longlisted Indie Awards — Nonfiction