One day ill remember thi.., p.29
One Day I'll Remember This, page 29
ALSO BY HELEN GARNER
FICTION
Monkey Grip
Honour & Other People’s Children
The Children’s Bach
Postcards from Surfers
Cosmo Cosmolino
The Spare Room
Stories
NON-FICTION
The First Stone
The Feel of Steel
Joe Cinque’s Consolation
This House of Grief
Everywhere I Look
True Stories
Yellow Notebook
FILM SCRIPTS
The Last Days of Chez Nous
Two Friends
About the Author
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 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look and Yellow Notebook.
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 writer’s psyche…Even 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 flavours…There 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 Garner’s eye—the momentary event, the instant’s feel, the texture of time…A book of heart-wrenching break-ups, growing friendships, tears and celebrations.’ Stuff.co.nz
‘Don’t mistake Helen Garner’s Yellow Notebook for “something sensational to read in the train”, as an Oscar Wilde heroine characterised her own diaries. Garner’s are spare, quiet, reflective: a portrait of the artist and her world, observed with scrupulous honesty.’ Brenda Niall
‘One of Australia’s greatest writers at her most raw, unedited, and brilliant…Yellow Notebook is both entirely ordinary, and completely transfixing.’ Good Reading
‘Full of Helen Garner’s 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 world—Helen Garner emerges as a moralist rippling with intent and mirth. The diary, clearly, is her true métier. 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 Garner’s 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
‘Garner’s 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 train—momentarily, distinct and tantalising in their beauty.’ New York Times
‘There’s 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
‘Garner’s spare, clean style flowers into magnificent poetry.’ Australian Book Review
‘She has a Jane Austen–like ability to whizz an arrow straight into the truest depths of human nature, including her own.’ Life Sentence
‘Compassionate and dispassionate in equal measure…She writes with a profound understanding of human vulnerability, and of the subtle workings of love, memory and remorse.’ Economist
‘Garner’s 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 voice—intimate yet sharp, wry yet urgent—inspires trust.’ Atlantic
‘Garner’s 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
textpublishing.com.au
The Text Publishing Company
Swann House, 22 William Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000, Australia
The Text Publishing Company (UK) Ltd
130 Wood Street, London EC2V 6DL, United Kingdom
Copyright © Helen Garner 2020
The moral right of Helen Garner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by The Text Publishing Company, 2020
Book design by Chong W. H.
Jacket photograph courtesy the author
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
ISBN: 9781922330277 (hardback)
ISBN: 9781925923704 (ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
Helen Garner, One Day I'll Remember This
