SHORTLISTED, Baillie Gifford Prize, United Kingdom, 2025

Helen Garner's acclaimed three volumes of diaries are collected here in one sumptuous book.

'I revere Helen Garner's writing, and it's in her diaries that she's at her acute, rigorous, pitch-perfect best.' Nigella Lawson

Spanning two decades-from the publication of her lightning-rod debut novel in the late 70s, to the throes of a consuming affair in the late 80s, and the messiness and pain of a disintegrating marriage in the late 90s-the diaries reveal the life of one of the world's greatest writers.

Devastatingly honest and disarmingly funny, How to End a Story is a portrait of loss, betrayal, and the sheer force of a woman's anger-but also of hard work and resilience, moments of hope and joy, the immutable ties of motherhood, and the regenerative power of a room of one's own.

PRAISE-

'Very well might be the finest literary diaries since Virginia Woolf's...' Daunt Books

'The real value of this collection is the opportunity it affords us to see the domestic, ordinary, everyday world through Garner's eyes.' Washington Post

'What a wonderful writer. Her prose is spare and beautiful...There are very few writers that I admire more.' David Nicholls

'This diary begins by registering what is ordinary, how days are, what it is like to be a writer, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a citizen of Melbourne.' Colm Toibin

'A voice of great honesty and energy.' Anne Enright

'A devastating and engrossing portrait of passion, artistic conundrums, motherhood, rage, resignation... leaves you drunk with awe.' Maria Semple