Most readers of Helen Garner will be able to pinpoint a first personal encounter with her work: a book, or even a sentence, that cut through like sharp light; a local landmark suddenly immortalised on the page; an unsayable bodily experience transformed into the unabashedly said.
Reading Garner, it’s as though doors and windows have been flung open and there, over the cups and dishes and fruit bowls, is the stuff of life – frankly, tenderly, impeccably revealed. Garner’s clarity is such that it almost aches.
