The Season

I love everything about this book - the clear-eyed acceptance of the effacement of old age before the dynamic imperative of youth; the way the baton is surrendered graciously, willingly; Garner’s dogged fidelity as a witness, whether it’s at a murder trial or sitting on the sidelines of a freezing footy field; that she is so intellectually interested in and unthreatened by masculinity – Clare ChambersI understand zip about football or any sport, but I cried. Glorious – Charlotte WoodGarner is working in epic mode in The Season as she examines familiar themes and preoccupations: masculinity and its codes, the pleasures and contradictions of social groups, what it means to bear witness … Garner has always been an extraordinary stylist and in The Season her prose, athletic, soars and dances, just like those young footballers * Guardian *The Season is marked by Garner’s unsparing eye for detail and that superpower of detachment - a narrator who sees everything yet who is also deeply involved in the story, with emotional flourishes that rise when she watches her grandson * Age *Startling in its candour and compelling in its nakedness … a marvellous paean to the glories of youth just shy of the treacheries of manhood * Australian *Her perfect prose and sharp observations are a joy * Sydney Morning Herald *Garner’s prose is as luminous as ever * Australian Book Review *The sentences are precise and they sing. Garner turns from philosophical reverie on mortality, or violence, or masculine shame, to capturing the looseness and love with which a family talks footy … It’s a book of gentle pleasures and deep meanings … As ever, when you put a Helen Garner book down and look up at the world again, you do so with newly sharpened eyes * Monthly *Is there anything more thrilling than reading Helen Garner on everyday things such as haircuts, the Melbourne skyline, ageing, AFL tactics, friendship and half-time oranges? A book for all seasons - not just the footy one! * Gleaner *

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.