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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
Adaptations
-
form
y
Monkey Grip
( dir. Ken Cameron
)
1982
Australia
:
Pavilion Films
,
1981
Z820614
1982
single work
film/TV
(taught in 1 units)
Set in inner Melbourne over two summers, Monkey Grip is a frank portrayal of a divorced mother who is attempting to cope with both her thirteen-year-old daughter and her own relationship with a drug addict, while also trying to get into the music business. As she battles to regain control of her life, we meet an array of talented and reckless musicians, actors, and writers, all of whom play a part in her world and most of whom refuse to live by society's rules.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
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y
Sean O'Beirne on Helen Garner
On Helen Garner
Carlton
:
Black Inc.
,
2022
21936494
2022
single work
essay
'What I love in Helen Garner’s writing is a particular kind of closeness to self, the good, greedy, mistaken, emotional, fierce, sceptical, changing and disrupting self. Garner makes so much from what seems to be just her individual sense, individual observation – rather than anything made by and for the group. But I also love the beautiful strong contradiction in her work: she’s always fighting to come back enough, as well, to find enough that can stop the self; enough of a good order, a rule, a law, a family, a home.
'In a brilliantly argued and very personal essay, Sean O’Beirne looks at the whole of Helen Garner’s writing life so far – from Monkey Grip to the recently published Diaries – while trying to come to terms with the demands, and the rewards, of Garner’s extraordinary, radical individualism and honesty.
'In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.
'Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.'
Source : publisher's blurb
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Single Motherhood as a Site for Feminist Reimagination in Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and 'Other People’s Children'
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 21 no. 2 2021;'By investigating the worlds of single mother protagonists in Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip (1977) and Other People’s Children (from Honour and Other People’s Children, 1980) this essay reflects on how Australian single mothers and their lived experiences were fictionally depicted in the decade the Supporting Mothers’ Benefit was introduced by the Whitlam Labor Government (1973).1 Much has been written about Garner’s variously-constructed collective households and the young, inner-city types who inhabited them. This essay focusses on how Garner’s single mothers negotiate the private and the political while negotiating maternal and erotic desire in the aftermath of the gains made by second-wave feminism. Contemporarily, despite these gains and the rise in and acceptability of SMC (single mothers by choice), ‘the family’ as an ideological construct, together with the predominance of phallogocentric logic continues to inhibit single mothers’ rights, equality and agency. This is one of the great contradictions of single motherhood: that while patriarchy enforces gendered and repressive values upon single mothers and their opportunities for transcendence, as a liminal, ‘in-between’ space, single motherhood presents a site for resistance and re-imagination, as well as an escape from domestic violence. I contend that in these early works Garner teases out this contradiction of constraint and freedom, similarly to how she famously examines the fault lines that exist in the ‘gap between theory and practice’ (OPC 53).' (Publication abstract)
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y
Live Recording : Helen Garner on Her Early Career
Chloe Hooper
(interviewer),
Melbourne
:
Readings
,
2019
23469032
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Helen Garner talks with Chloe Hooper about her early career and the impact of Monkey Grip and The Children’s Bach on her writing life. This is a live recording from our event.' (Production summary)
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On the Dizzy Edge
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 21 March vol. 41 no. 6 2019; (p. 33-34)
— Review of Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel ; The Children's Bach 1984 single work novella'To read a novel by Helen Garner is to intrude on characters living their lives with no regard for your presence. You wander into their stories with the same sense of abandon with which they wander into Melbourne flophouses, drug dens, the homes of old and new lovers. ‘In the old brown house on the corner, a mile from the middle of the city, we ate bacon for breakfast every morning of our lives,’ begins Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip (1977), whose narrator, Nora, ushers you to the kitchen table then leaves you to pick your way through the raucous crowd gathered there in the summer of 1975. Here is Martin, her faithful lover, ‘teetering as many were that summer on the dizzy edge of smack’. Here is Javo, ‘just back from getting off dope in Hobart’, Lou, Selena, Georgie, Clive, Eve, Gracie – and a little boy called ‘the Roaster’ who seems to belong to no one and everyone. There are no introductions, just intimacies that rise sharply above the clatter only to sink back into it.' (Introduction)
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In the Grip of Melbourne : Revisiting Monkey Grip
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , December 2018;'Text’s new edition of Helen Garner’s 1977 novel Monkey Grip is an opportunity to revisit the book’s influence on Melbourne. In addition to being widely considered a classic of Australian fiction, Monkey Grip is frequently referred to as an iconic ‘Melbourne’ novel. Certainly, it is a novel absolutely grounded in and shaped by place. Monkey Grip exhibits an intimacy with place that is built through local knowledge and the regular, routine movement through the spaces of one’s life. The city is much more than a backdrop to action. For Nora, the narrator and protagonist, it is the locus of the social encounter and emotional intensity on which the book’s narrative depends...' (Introduction)
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First Impressions : The Critical Archives
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 1 November 2003; (p. 2)
— Review of Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel -
Monkey Grip
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: Womanspeak , March-April vol. 3 no. 5 1978; (p. 29)
— Review of Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel -
[Review] Monkey Grip
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: Luna , vol. 3 no. 1 1978; (p. 42)
— Review of Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel -
Books of the Week
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Mail , 30 September 2012; (p. 37)
— Review of Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel -
The Books That Made Us
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 19-20 August 1995; (p. rev 1-2)
— Review of My Brother Jack : A Novel 1964 single work novel ; The Lucky Country 1964 single work non-fiction ; Joe Wilson and His Mates 1901 selected work short story ; My Brilliant Career 1901 single work novel ; Monkey Grip 1977 single work novel ; Voss : A Novel 1957 single work novel ; The Fortunes of Richard Mahony 1917 single work novel -
Traffic
i
"The traffic is heavy today and the going's uphill. This is the",
1988
single work
poetry
— Appears in: Telling Ways : Australian Women's Experimental Writing 1988; (p. 53) Wordhord : A Critical Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Poetry 1989; (p. 236) -
Coming Clean in an Ocean of Grey
2003
single work
column
— Appears in: Canberra Sunday Times , 12 October 2003; (p. 19) -
Mother & Child Reunion
2006
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Age , 19 August 2006; (p. 12-13) The Sydney Morning Herald , 19-20 August 2006; (p. 8-9) -
Hard Hearts, Tender Years
2006
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Age , 7 October 2006; (p. 5) -
Sex in the City : Sexual Predation in Contemporary Australian Grunge Fiction
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Aumla , May no. 107 2007; (p. 145-158) 'This essay will focus on the sexuality of grunge fiction characters, and will examine the relationship of this focus to issues of embodiment, culture and urban spaces' (146).
Awards
- 1978 joint winner National Book Council Award for Australian Literature
- Melbourne, Victoria,
- 1970s