ONE OF THE BBC''S 100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD In Monkey Grip , Helen Garner charts the lives of a generation. Set in Australia in the late 1970s, this seminal debut novel follows single mother and writer Nora as she navigates the tumultuous cityscape of Melbourne''s bohemian underground, often with her young daughter Gracie in tow. But when Nora falls in love with the flighty Javo, she becomes snared in the web of a desperate relationship. Nora''s addiction is romantic love; Javo''s is hard drugs. The harder they pull away, the tighter the monkey grip. ''Smack habit, love habit - what''s the difference?'' Nora asks. ''They can both kill you.'' When it first published in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod. Many critics scorned Garner''s gritty depictions of the human body and all its muck, her frankness about sex and drugs and the mess of motherhood. Today, we can see Monkey Grip for what it is: a seminal novel of Australian counterculture that launched the career of one of Australia''s greatest writers. A W&N Essential

Vorwort
The novel that launched the career of one of Australia's greatest writers, following the doomed infatuations of a young, single mother, enthralled by the excesses of Melbourne's late-70s counterculture

Autorentext

Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She worked as a high school teacher, then as a freelance journalist. Since 1977 she has published novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. She is the winner of the 2006 inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction, the 2019 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the 2023 Australian Society of Authors Medal. Her books include This House of Grief, Monkey Grip and The Children's Bach.

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'Seductive as hell. Brilliant, unusual, breathtaking' LAUREN GROFF
'Languid, beautiful' ANOTHER MAGAZINE
**'Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock'n'roll' MADELAINE LUCAS**

In 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman.

She is happy moving between the city's communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely.

But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him.

On its first publication in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod due to its frank portrayal of the lives of Garner's generation. Now a modern classic, it introduces us to Helen Garner's dazzling and radical literary voice.

A W&N Essential with an introduction by Lauren Groff