The savage suburbia of Helen Garner: ‘I wanted to dong Martin Amis with a bat’
Over 50 years, she has become one of the most revered writers in Australia. Is she finally going to get worldwide recognition?
In early January, the Australian author Helen Garner decided to cut back an unruly bush in her garden. Garner lives in a Melbourne suburb in the adjoining house to her daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, some chickens and a dog. The family were away at the beach for the holidays and Garner found herself alone, in an off-kilter frame of mind. She’s 82, her beach days are over, but she felt her family’s absence. Her grandchildren were growing up, the youngest now 18. Garner realised she was on the brink of a loneliness not felt since she’d moved to live alongside them 20 years ago, after the end of her third and final marriage, to the author Murray Bail.
Missing her family, feeling adrift, she went outside with some secateurs and “pruned the shit” out of the bush in such frenzied bursts that the next day, when she looked out of the window, she saw a scene of devastation, barely a leaf left. “I don’t know if it’ll grow back,” she said, aghast and delighted at her own violence. The attack wasn’t senseless: Garner knew the particular catharsis it might contain. “Being willing to destroy is very important, I think,” she said. “To destroy something in a purposeful and orderly way, not in a hysterical way.” She paused, to plot the pleasures of her next sentence. “To be out there with a sharp-edged blade.”
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