Helen Garner is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene—it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).
Garner in 2015
Janet Clarke Hall, where Garner resided in the 1960s as a student of the University of Melbourne
Garner wrote most of Monkey Grip in the Latrobe Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria in the mid-1970s.
Monkey Grip is a 1977 novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, her first published book. It initially received a mixed critical reception, but has now become accepted as a classic of modern Australian literature. The novel deals with the life of single-mother Nora, as she narrates her increasingly tumultuous relationship with a flaky heroin addict, juxtaposed with her raising a daughter while living in share houses in Melbourne during the late 1970s. A film based on the novel, also titled Monkey Grip, was released in 1982. In the 1990s, when critics identified the Australian literary genre of grunge lit, the book was retrospectively categorized as one of the first examples of this genre.
First edition
The heritage-listed "Aqua Profonda" sign at the Fitzroy baths, which many of the characters in Monkey Grip frequent during the hot summer days.
Much of the novel was transcribed from Garner's diary entries at Melbourne's La Trobe Reading room.
Nora consults the ancient, mystical Chinese divination text I Ching and records its synchronicities relating to her relationship with Javo.
