How to End a Story

Helen Garner’s acclaimed three volumes of diaries are collected here in one sumptuous book. Spanning two decades—from the publication of her lightning-rod debut novel in the late 70s, to the throes of a consuming affair in the late 80s, and the messiness and pain of a disintegrating marriage in the late 90s—the diaries reveal the life of one of the world’s greatest writers.

Devastatingly honest and disarmingly funny, How to End a Story is a portrait of loss, betrayal, and the sheer force of a woman’s anger—but also of hard work and resilience, moments of hope and joy, the immutable ties of motherhood, and the regenerative power of a room of one’s own.

‘The real value of this collection is the opportunity it affords us to see the domestic, ordinary, everyday world through Garner’s eyes.’ Washington Post
‘I revere Helen Garner’s writing, and it’s in her diaries that she’s at her acute, rigorous, pitch-perfect best.’ Nigella Lawson
‘What a wonderful writer. Her prose is spare and beautiful, her stories are truthful and touching. There are very few writers that I admire more.’ David Nicholls
‘A voice of great honesty and energy.’ Anne Enright
‘Garner has an ideal voice to express late-night pangs of precariousness and distress, some more comic than others. Her prose is clear, honest, and economical.’ New York Times Book Review
‘Garner’s honesty and her refusal to take things at face value, even when she cannot see what’s right before her eyes, give her work enormous power…Even if you already know her work, I think you’ll devour the diaries.’ Washington Independent Review of Books
‘Very well might be the finest literary diaries since Virginia Woolf’s…Told with devastating honestly, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life, How to End a Story offers all the satisfactions of a novel alongside the enthralling intimacy of something written in private and just for pleasure.’ Daunt Books [UK]

Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2019. And in 2023 she was awarded the ASA Medal for her outstanding contribution to Australian literature. Her works include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, The Spare Room, This House of Grief, The Season and three volumes of her diaries. She lives in Melbourne.

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