Monkey Grip

'Seductive as hell. Brilliant, unusual, breathtaking' LAUREN GROFF 'Languid, beautiful' ANOTHER MAGAZINE 'Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock'n'roll' MADELAINE LUCAS In 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman. She is happy moving between the city's communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely. But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him. On its first publication in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod due to its frank portrayal of the lives of Garner's generation. Now a modern classic, it introduces us to Helen Garner's dazzling and radical literary voice. A W&N Essential with an introduction by Lauren Groff

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.