True Stories

Wow, what a collection! When this hefty brick arrived on the reserve shelf, it was like getting the Fitzroy pool itself delivered, promising hours of bliss to dive in and swim around.

As a Helen Garner devotee, there wasn't much in this volume of forty years of short non-fiction pieces that I hadn't already read -- a handful of reviews, maybe a couple of articles for obscure magazines. But the fact that most of it was familiar didn't detract at all from the pleasure of re-reading it. Garner's prose style is exemplary; her eye is so keen; her intellect is astringent. She can be judgey, but she is also compassionate, and she is very aware of her own flaws. 

There is a grab bag of subjects here -- reviews and portraits, quotidian experiences, bits of diary, newspaper columns, murder and death, relationships and encounters. True Stories is 650 pages long, but every page was a treat to read. I've decided that if I were marooned on a desert island, I could survive without any new books to read as long as I had the collected works of Helen Garner, Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden and Alan Garner to see me through.