Stories

It's almost hilarious to contrast how skinny this volume of Helen Garner's collected short fiction is, compared with the companion volume of True Stories, which is about four times as fat. Lots of blank pages and huge margins in Stories, too.

Some of the pieces in Stories don't read much like fiction; as always, the border between fiction and non-fiction in Garner's work is porous to say the least. There were only a couple of these stories where I couldn't trace some kind of connection to Garner's own life, and perhaps even in those cases I just couldn't see the connection because I don't know her well enough. Does it really matter what's true and what's invented, or shaped, or curated, or edited, or enhanced? Every writer uses the clay of real life to some degree; just because Garner is more honest about her material doesn't make the final result any the less art.

I think all these pieces were new to me, so I was very happy to have read them. The final story, What We Say, was especially devastating, in that understated, elliptical way Garner has. What a superb writer she is.