THE SAVAGE SUBURBIA OF HELEN GARNER

Over 50 years the Australian has become one of her country's most revered and beloved authors, writing as if readers were her friend, party to her most candid thoughts. Is she finally going to get worldwide recognition? By Sophie Elmhirst

- CHARLIE KINROSS

IN EARLY JANUARY, THE AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR HELEN GARNER decided to cut back an unruly bush in her garden. Garner lives in a Melbourne suburb in the adjoining house to her daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, some chickens and a dog. The family were away at the beach for the holidays and Garner found herself alone, in an off-kilter frame of mind. She's 82, her beach days are over, but she felt her family's absence. Her grandchildren were growing up, the youngest now 18. Garner realised she was on the brink of a loneliness not felt since she'd moved to live alongside them 20 years ago, after the end of her third and final marriage, to the author Murray Bail.

Feeling adrift, she went outside with some secateurs and "pruned the shit" out of the bush in such frenzied bursts that the next day, when she looked out of the window, she saw a scene of devastation, barely a leaf left. "I don't know if it'll grow back," she said, aghast and delighted at her own violence. The attack wasn't senseless. "Being willing to destroy is very important, I think," she said. "To destroy something in a purposeful and orderly way, not in a hysterical way." She paused, to plot the pleasures of her next sentence. "To be out there with a sharp-edged blade." Garner is one of the most revered and beloved writers in Australia.

She became famous from the moment she published her autobiographical first novel, Monkey Grip, about living with her daughter in commune-style houses in Melbourne in the 1970s. Subsequent novels, such as The Children's Bach and The Spare Room, are slim, taut books, charting the interior dramas of family and friendship.

Her nonfiction, written in the second half of her career, has mostly been reported from courtrooms: Joe Cinque's Consolation and This House of Grief are both accounts of long murder trials.