November 15, 2023
A dreamy sojourn in the druggy, sexy counterculture of mid-1970s Melbourne, Australia. "There was plenty of good dope around. Gracie was at school. The sun shone every day. I rode my bike everywhere. I went to the library. I was reading two novels a day. When Gracie came home from school we would doze off on my bed in the hot afternoon. For days at a time there was no sign of Javo." When this novel was first published in Australia in 1977, it was both a huge bestseller and the focus of critical outrage. Garner's fiction debut was so closely modeled on her own life that she was accused of having published her diary. Her response was, essentially, so what? As for the novel's title, its meaning is elucidated by protagonist Nora, cursing her obsession with Javo: "Smack habit, love habit--what's the difference?" Javo himself is straight outta Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the ultimate charming fuckup/hopeless addict. As a druggy single mom navigating a complicated web of open relationships, Nora has frequent recourse to the wisdom of the I Ching: "You gather friends around you / As a hair clasp gathers the hair." However spotty the attention of the grown-ups, 5-year-old Gracie seems more than able to cope, at one point playing "downstairs by herself, singing and drawing and reading aloud great tracts of Baby and Child Care by Doctor Spock." In an introduction to this edition, Lauren Groff speaks of feeling "gripped inexorably by Helen Garner's marvelous prose" and finding the book to be "suffused with this sort of sideways happiness even in the deepest throes of Nora's misery." Hmmm, yes, though for some the grip may wear off somewhere in the middle of the 352 pages. Just as interesting as reading the book is reading about the book; with Garner now the literary queen of Australia, much thinking and rethinking about this seminal novel has gone on. High times with the mother of autofiction.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 1, 2024
Finding and keeping love is hard. There is so much competition from other potential partners as well as from responsibilities to work, family, and friends. But when the rivalry is between narcotics and the object of one's affections, holding on is nigh impossible. Acclaimed Australian writer Garner's achingly poignant portrait of a young woman and the drug addict she loves rings with an authenticity that is, by turns, frustrating and sweet. In the ever-fluid coupling and throupling of Melbourne in the 1970s era of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, Nora's love for Javo is constantly threatened by Javo's need to get high and take risks. For Nora, desiring Javo is an addiction unto itself, and Nora schemes to supplant heroin as Javo's drug of choice. In this U.S. release of her revered debut novel, Garner presents the twisted tango performed by addicts, no matter the nature of the monkey on their back. In buoyant and vivid prose, Garner evokes the lies, deceptions, delusions, and hope that come with a life always lived on the edge of despair or delight.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.