Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

I have attacked Garner’s catalogue backwards: from newest to oldest. This is her seminal first novel, published in 1977 and later made into a cult classic film. Based in Carlton, it’s a tale of loving people you shouldn’t and loving them anyway. I love how unapologetic Garner’s characters are in her novels, unflinching. It’s a snapshot of a place and a time, of twenty-somethings drinking brandy alexanders at the local pub for 20 cents, bed swapping and drug taking, and reminded me of my own Carlton spent uni days, which were not quite as hedonistic but filled with beer, declarations of love, general confusion and good times.

Heroin is abound and Nora’s in love with Javo, a hopeless junkie. He floats in and out of her Rathdowne St share house, ignores her at parties and goes to Hobart to dry out. Everyone is shagging and snorting up, and there’s a weird casualness to these relationships that seems foreign in today’s age of caution. Safe sex or injecting is never an issue. I highlighted this passage as it just so perfectly encapsulated a moment I’ve had more than once (substitute the wood chopping with another small household task):

“Tentatively I stood a great lump of wood on the chopping block and bought the axe down on it. It flew into two perfect halves. Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing Respect and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition almost crying with jubilation – not just about the wood, but because I could live competently some of the time, and because that day I liked myself.”

Perfect, honest, un-airbrushed words from a true wordsmith.