Strewn with devastating honesty, sparkling humour and steel-sharp wit, these expertly arranged volumes offer a window into the life and work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers. Helen Garner’s collected diaries span 20 years, with the first volume beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her debut novel ‘Monkey Grip’. The second volume begins in 1987 as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and the final volume in 1995, as she fights to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her. Shockingly relatable and forensically observed, these diaries reveal the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. In doing so, they uncover the messy, painful, dark side of love, the sheer force of a woman’s anger, the immutable ties of motherhood and the regenerative power of a room of one’s own.