‘Being hated is very bracing’: Helen Garner on surviving three marriages and being called a ‘rotten feminist’

Her unsparing fiction and true crime writing have made her one of Australia’s most controversial and celebrated authors. The author discusses relationships, resilience – and finding global recognition five decades into her career A few years ago, when Helen Garner had an idea to

Her unsparing fiction and true crime writing have made her one of Australia’s most controversial and celebrated authors. The author discusses relationships, resilience – and finding global recognition five decades into her career A few years ago, when Helen Garner had an idea to write a book about Australian rules football, her heart soared then immediately sank. The impetus was Ambrose, her teenage grandson, who played for a local team.

Garner enjoyed watching them and wanted to put this into writing. Then the dreary thought: “I’ll have to swot, read the rulebook.” People to whom she mentioned the idea assumed she’d be writing a polemic, “like what it means in society and how terrible it is and what violence means. And I’m going: ‘What a bore.’” As anyone familiar with Garner’s almost 50-year writing career will know, there is nothing more igniting to the 83-year-old than the invitation to outrun boredom by going off in an unauthorised direction.

Garner, who is speaking to me via video call from her home in Melbourne, occupies that tiny category of writers famous enough to be recognised in public. Stopped by strangers in the street, she’s often treated to their strong views about her work. As a result, perhaps, she has perfected a very Garnerian obstinacy, enabling her to resist other people’s bossy opinions which, in the case of The Season , meant no tedious explainers about the rules, history or sociology of Aussie rules football.

Instead, says Garner, she envisaged following a single season of Ambrose’s U16s team, the Flemington Colts, as “a nanna’s book”. During publicity, she’d turn up to an event at a library to find “the first five rows packed with nannas; all these white-haired women with hankies in their hands. And I feel nobody writes about nannas.

I mean, sentimentally, yes; but I want to say what they’re really like.” Continue reading...