When I first read Helen Garner's debut novel I felt all at sea. Despite sharing some elements of the Melbourne share house milieu (albeit about a decade after Garner's Nora cycled through those familiar streets), in other ways her world was completely alien to me. I shrank from the drug-taking, I was baffled by the partner-swapping, the casual falling in and out of bed together (which was actually much more emotionally fraught than the characters were striving for it to be), I had no experience of the relentless demands of motherhood. And everyone was so much cooler than me, it was intimidating.
Re-reading Monkey Grip now, with my share-house days far in the distant past, I think I understand the book much better. It helps to realise that the novel is a thinly fictionalised version of Garner's diaries from the time -- on the first reading, the kaleidoscope of characters made my head reel. Reading it as a diary is much more straightforward for some reason. However, there were many times when I longed to shake young Helen/Nora by the shoulders and beg her to give up on these selfish, self-absorbed men! One serious mistake by the film-makers was the casting of Colin Friels together with Noni Hazlehurst -- addict Javo is only twenty three in the book, nearly ten years younger than Nora, and this is an important dynamic of their relationship, one which I think the movie will struggle to reproduce. I say will because I can't actually remember much about the film; I'm going to re-watch it today.
I so agree - knowing that Monkey Grip relates to Helen Garner's diaries does make sense of the novel. I read it first in 1980, 3 years after it was first published, when I was 22. It was a set text for an English literature subject at Teachers' College. I was still in a share house at the time and though I was in a stable relationship, people around me were falling in and out of love and beds, experimenting with drugs and all kinds of recklessness. I wasn't especially reckless myself - I saved that for my early 30's! - but there was so much I could understand and relate to while many of my teacher's college class were repelled by the whole scene...and very judgemental. I re-read it a couple of years ago. I'd become an absolute fan of Garner's diaries by then, and enjoyed the book so much. I vaguely remember being disturbed by the film because as a babysitter I watched so much Playschool and I was thinking, 'No! Not Noni's nipple! It's not right!'
ReplyDeleteHa ha, I just finished watching the film and Noni's boozies are very much the stars of the show! It was amazing to watch it again and see so much of 80s Melbourne -- the orange and green trams, old Spencer St, the mirrored extension to the Exhibition Buildings, all the shabby old Victorian houses. So evocative. I think I was very judgmental too when I first read it, I seem to have mellowed in the interim :)
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