Cirrus@Austlit

'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) 

'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.