image of person or book cover 3996000325043137441.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 single work   diary  
Is part of Helen Garner : Diaries Helen Garner , 2019 series - author diary (number 1 in series)
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'HELEN Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard.

'Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.

'Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume 1, in this elegant hardback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  • This book has been selected for Guardian Australia’s series The Unmissables, highlighting the most notable Australian books of the year.

  •  Epigraph: 'We are here for this - to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to stand the blows and hand them out.' - Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 3996000325043137441.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 288p.p.
      Reprinted: May 2022 (paperback)
      Note/s:
      • Published November 2019.
      ISBN: 9781922268143, 9781925774917, 9781922330239 (pbk)
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
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Related Works

The Outstretched Limb Helen Garner , 2019 extract autobiography (Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986)
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9 November 2019; (p. 21)

'In this exclusive extract from Helen Garner’s Yellow Notebook, the diarist considers her novel Monkey Grip, Rainer Maria Rilke, Woody Allen, Apocalypse Now, ennui, love, self-disgust and hamsters.' (Introduction) 
y separately published work icon One Day I'll Remember This : Diaries 1987-1995 Helen Garner , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2020 19599730 2020 single work diary

'Helen Garner’s second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the bombshell that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work.

'With devastating honesty, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another—how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both thrilling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (2)

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Lisa Gorton on Helen Garner's Third Volume of Diaries Lisa Gorton , Peter Rose (presenter), 2022 23749093 2022 single work podcast

'‘I would like to write about dominance, revulsion, separation, the horrible struggles between people who love each other,’ wrote Helen Garner, foreshadowing How to End a Story, the final instalment of her published diaries, following Yellow Notebook (2019) and One Day I’ll Remember This (2020). While the first two volumes spanned eight years apiece, How to End a Story spans only three. Starting in 1995, shortly after the release of Garner’s The First Stone, it details the dissolution of her marriage to another writer, V. As Lisa Gorton notes, this volume differs from its precursors both in tone and focus: ‘This one is as compelling as a detective story. This one is edited with the sense of an ending.’ (Production summary)
A Hard Nut in the Centre Susan Lever , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Inside Story , December 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary ; One Day I'll Remember This : Diaries 1987-1995 Helen Garner , 2020 single work diary 'A writer’s complex life emerges in Helen Garner’s diaries'
Diaries : Empirical Evidence and Desire Moya Costello , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary 'All of Helen Garner’s work is intensely personal. But diaries and letters are genres particularly charged with intimacy. On reading the Garner diaries, what came to my mind yet again was a statement from Janet Malcolm: ‘voyeurism’ is one of the impulses behind reading life writing (Malcolm 1994: 9).' (Introduction)
Summer of Cousins i "Melbourne in summer", Rory Harris , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 22 March vol. 30 no. 6 2020;
y separately published work icon Helen Garner's Diaries The ABR Podcast : Episode 3 Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 18599240 2020 single work podcast review
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary

'ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. [Peter] delves into Garner's own private musings, the diaries she kept during the pivotal years of her writing life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
Helen Garner : Yellow Notebook Peter Craven , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 2-8 November 2019;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary

'The myth of Helen Garner’s diaries is immense. When she published Monkey Grip 40-odd years ago, with its riveting depiction of emotional and drug squalors in inner-urban Melbourne, she evoked a world that had never been written about before. But the novel’s heartbreaks and contentments, with its central portrait of Javo the junkie, were accused of being just diaries rehashed as fiction. The alternative view of the Garner diaries is that they constitute her major life’s work: that when they saw the light of day – presumably, people thought, after her death – they would be acknowledged as one of the great journals of lived experience, up there with Pepys and Gide.' (Introduction)
'To Stand the Blows' : The Flexile Diaries of Helen Garner Peter Rose , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 417 2019; (p. 10-13)
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary 'Anyone who keeps a diary day in, day out for decades knows why Helen Garner, a few years ago, destroyed her early ones, deeming them boring and self-obsessed. Incineration has a long, proud history: think of Henry James, late in life, at his incinerator in Rye, burning all his letters and private papers – that lamentable blaze. The sheer misery and tedium of our early journals can be dejecting. ‘What is the point of this diary?’ Garner asks herself in 1981. ‘There is always something deeper, that I don’t write, even when I think I’m saying everything.’' (Introduction)
Out of Chaos Comes Form Susan Wyndham , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 November 2019; (p. 26)
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary

'Helen Garner’s diaries reveal a writer full of complexity'
y separately published work icon Helen Garner's Diaries The ABR Podcast : Episode 3 Peter Rose (presenter), 2020 18599240 2020 single work podcast review
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary

'ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. [Peter] delves into Garner's own private musings, the diaries she kept during the pivotal years of her writing life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
Diaries : Empirical Evidence and Desire Moya Costello , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of Yellow Notebook : Diaries Volume I, 1978-1986 Helen Garner , 2019 single work diary 'All of Helen Garner’s work is intensely personal. But diaries and letters are genres particularly charged with intimacy. On reading the Garner diaries, what came to my mind yet again was a statement from Janet Malcolm: ‘voyeurism’ is one of the impulses behind reading life writing (Malcolm 1994: 9).' (Introduction)
My Early Diaries Filled Me with so Much Shame I Burned Them. I’m Publishing the Rest Helen Garner , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 30 October 2019;

'Revisiting a diary forces you to confront ‘ugly, foolish behaviour’, writes Helen Garner. Pulling together a book of extracts was instructive – but not easy.'
Sensory Fragments and Self-doubt: Drawing Back the Curtain on Helen Garner's Mind Lucy Clark , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 5 November 2019;

'It’s a strange comfort to discover in Yellow Notebook even a writer of Garner’s force has suffered from – and survived – a lack of confidence.' (Introduction)
Summer of Cousins i "Melbourne in summer", Rory Harris , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 22 March vol. 30 no. 6 2020;
y separately published work icon Lisa Gorton on Helen Garner's Third Volume of Diaries Lisa Gorton , Peter Rose (presenter), 2022 23749093 2022 single work podcast

'‘I would like to write about dominance, revulsion, separation, the horrible struggles between people who love each other,’ wrote Helen Garner, foreshadowing How to End a Story, the final instalment of her published diaries, following Yellow Notebook (2019) and One Day I’ll Remember This (2020). While the first two volumes spanned eight years apiece, How to End a Story spans only three. Starting in 1995, shortly after the release of Garner’s The First Stone, it details the dissolution of her marriage to another writer, V. As Lisa Gorton notes, this volume differs from its precursors both in tone and focus: ‘This one is as compelling as a detective story. This one is edited with the sense of an ending.’ (Production summary)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (10)

Awards

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Last amended 3 May 2022 08:36:49
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