Well, I have just finished reading "Monkey Grip", my third Helen Garner read. I don't know how she does it. Garner gives so much story without bogging it down with tiny details. Its as though she just took the roof off of a house and let us all peek inside like a fly on the wall and watch life happen.
   "Monkey Grip" is 1970's suburban Melbourne, communal living and drugs, just to scratch the surface. We follow Nora who's fallen hard for Javo, and along with that, falling in love with an addict. This is not a light story, it's intense following all the repercussions that come with her love of a junkie, which in itself is its own addiction. Loving and learning to let go. 
    What Garner does is just plainly putting the story out there in its realness and doesn't fall into the over dramatic Lifetime movie of the week sort of treatment that stories like this tend to get. What we get is to watch a glimpse of Noras side of life. One that unfortunately is not a stranger to so many.
     I have said it before and I'm saying it again..I am so glad that we are fortunate enough to get a chance to read Garners works stateside now. Australia kept her a secret long enough!

Australian author Helen Garner wrote this novel during the days of hippies, free love and women's lib. Nora is a young woman, living in a Melbourne commune with her young children and an assorted crew of like-minded adults. Nora has her share of sexual partners, and wild times, but is in the 'monkey grip' of her love for Javo. Javon is caught in the monkey grip of hard-core drug addiction, which leads to he and Nora being together and then torn apart over and over.

Much slower than The Children's Bach (and also a lot longer), but Garner has such a way with sentences. There is something distinctly 20th century about this writing, and I felt it more in Monkey Grip than I did in The Children's Bach—the form, which reads to me as if a diary, and the looseness with which it deals with the surrounding circumstances of the novel. There are plenty of things about Nora's life that we come to understand gradually (her relationships with various people, her profession, their professions, etc.), but none of it is explained straightforwardly because for the most part it seems not to matter. A really curious novel. Garner is very good.

This is a tough book for me to review because it wasn't an easy read for me. This is the second book from Helen Garner that I've read, and I adore her writing style. She's able to make the reader feel the intense emotions that are being felt by the characters. Monkey Grip takes place in the '70s and follows Nora as she lives this bohemian lifestyle while raising her young daughter. Even though she knows she shouldn't, she falls in love with one of her (many) bed partners, Javo, who's a junkie. As one can imagine, this relationship isn't healthy and causes a lot of turmoil for all involved. I'm glad I read it and would definitely recommend. Thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for the ARC.

Monkey Grip by H. Garner, published by Pantheon tells Nora's story. The single mom is living in Melbourne, Australia and this is her story.
A story about interpersonal relations, drugs, life, love and more much more, raw and gritty. The storytelling is extraordinaire, outstanding and I can't get enough of the author's writing.
I recommend the book, 5 stars.

Recommended for those of us who have battered original paperbacks of AFTER CLAUDE and LITHIUM FOR MEDEA. I love that there are still novels out there that run in this very specific genre that were published 40 years ago and I still don’t know about them until they get a flamboyant marketing campaign alongside a new edition. It’s satisfying but also feels rude?

Like how have I never heard of this book before? My actual favorite genre of novel is “1st person female narrator, a woman on the verge of madness, tries excess instead of success, uses powder drugs and self-delusion to overcome having to clean up after both a ruinous 20th century and men to whom it never occurred that someone is doing their dishes.”

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC. And for reviving Helen Garner.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is set in the 70s, and it centers around a group of lovers and drug users. Love is free until it isn't; the drugs are fun until they aren't.