True Stories : Selected Non-Fiction

Helen Garner visits the morgue, and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning fifty, and the storm caused by The First Stone. Her story on the murder of the two-year-old Daniel Valerio wins her a Walkley Award.

Garner looks at the world with a shrewd and sympathetic eye. Her non-fiction, with its many voices, is always passionate and compelling. True Stories is an extraordinary book, spanning twenty-five years of work, by one of Australia’s great writers.

Praise for True Stories:

‘Garner is a storyteller, an observer. Her style is beautifully simple. People who are on a fixed diet of fiction or who gaze on airport shelves could cleanse their palates with Garner as they might once have done with Jane Austen. ’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.’

Bulletin