peteg's blog - noise - books - 2006 12 21 Garner PostcardsFromSurfers

Helen Garner: Postcards from Surfers

Thu, Dec 21, 2006./noise/books | Link

A collection of short stories. I enjoyed Postcards from Surfers and Little Helen's Sunday Afternoon. Her closing The Children's Bach is the best piece of fiction I've yet read by her, but the standard Garner complaints of being a sketchy journal write-up and pedestrian-of-plot apply. Indeed, there are some parallels with Altman's Nashville. She describes Melbourne quite beautifully, though again I wonder how it would strike someone unfamiliar with the city. Her non-fiction has been more to my taste.