How to End a StoryHow to End a Story

"A master of many literary forms, [Helen] Garner is best known for her frank, unsparing, and intricate portraits of "ordinary people in difficult times" (New York Times). But the inspiration for it all was her extensive collection of diaries--fastidiously kept, intricately written, and delightfully dishy, unspooling the inner lives of her insular world in bohemian Melbourne. Now, for the first time, all three volumes of Garner's inimitable diaries are collected into one book. Spanning more than two decades, each finely etched volume reveals Garner like never before: a fledgling author publishing her lightning-rod debut novel in the late 70s; in the throes of a consuming affair in the late 80s; and clinging to a disintegrating marriage in the late 90s. And all the while, they bear witness to one of the world's great writers hard at work"--