Everywhere I Look

"The no-b*llshit-preamble rule is sparklingly employed...Garner is a natural storyteller: her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive...What gives the memoir its power, as so often in Garner' s writing, is that she is unsparing, in equal measure, of her subject and of herself, and that she so relishes complicated feelings...[Everywhere I Look] is made singular by Garner's almost reckless honesty, and brought alive by her mortal details...Garner is scrupulous, painstaking, and detailed, with sharp eyes and ears. She is everywhere at once, watching and listening, a recording angel at life s secular apocalypses...her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive." - James Wood, The New Yorker

'Garner's prose is so very pleasant to read: dry, relaxed sentences that calmly reach out towards loveliness... But she's equally adept at capturing the essence of people... it's this kind of willingness to look at and truly see the failures of human behaviour, in herself no less than in others, that lends her work its power.' - The Guardian

'A thoughtful dissection of the emotional anatomy of the everyday.'- Financial Times

'[Garner] has a way of describing the world with such wisdom and candour and, sometimes, delight, that it takes one's breath away... at least, it does mine. Her observations about life are refreshing in their honesty... This is a fine collection that offers many delights to the reader.' - Readings

'Similar to a hike, the book is best enjoyed without straining to finish it. It's full of moments to pause and reflect. More importantly, it stirs up that addictive, expansive feeling only the best books can achieve: that you have reached the final page changed, perhaps even a better and more thoughtful person from having travelled alongside Garner's observations for a time.' - Daily Review

'It is a rich, beautiful book by a poet of the everyday, a sheer master of prose. Give it to your grandmother, give it to your tweeting girlfriend. Give it to any man or woman who understands the magic of language. It will hurl them into great gulfs of pleasure, of turmoil and understanding and joy.' - Australian

'Garner brings to the collection not only her tremendous powers of observation but a continued employment of those skills to force readers to confront unpleasant truths. The graceful prose with which she delivers her insights will challenge readers to look at what is happening around them.' - STARRED Review, Library Journal

'Imagine a writer who writes with the humor and precision of Joy Williams, the warmth and ferocity of Elena Ferrante, and the investigative rigor of Janet Malcolm... Read this book and you will wonder how you lived for years without Garner's voice in your ear.'- John Freeman, LitHub

"The light of Helen Garner' s piercing observation shines on parents, friends, books, time, the weather, and herself. It' s impossible not to trust these engrossing dispatches in their passion and honesty. A lifetime of looking and taking note, and the hard work of examining the significance of what is seen and felt, make this a masterly collection of essays by our greatest non-fiction writer. " - Joan London, The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald

"Helen Garner' s Everywhere I Look is not quite a memoir, but there is a keen personal element to this collection of short nonfiction pieces. Garner has just received an outstanding general review from James Wood in the New Yorker. It's long overdue." - Australian

"Whenever I see Garner I try to act normal but inside, some part of me is always squealing IT'S HELEN GARNER!!! Her new book, Everywhere I Look, is masterful, like everything she writes." --Leigh Sales, ABC News

"Everywhere I Look is like having a backstage pass into the mind, notebooks and creative process of one of Australia's very best writers." - Andy Griffiths, Guardian

"Spanning 15 years, this varied collection of short non-fiction pieces presents some of Helen Garner's best work. Whether it's a dig into her own life or a broader look into societal whims and ills, Helen Garner is one of our most skilled essayists." - Best Books of 2016, Sydney Morning Herald

"It's no wonder Garner won a major international award, the $150,000 Yale-based Wyndham-Campbell Prize, for her non-fiction writing this year. You just have to read this collection of essays, diary entries and true stories spanning the past 20 years to recognise her immense talent." - Best Books of 2016, Australian Financial Review

"A mesmerising collection of essays and diary entries, this is a book to savour and re-read. The diary entries in particular are a treat: tiny fragments of life brilliantly observed and beautifully crafted by one of Australia s greatest writers." - Readings

'Like strolling around in an idiosyncratic, surprising, and informative museum.'--Kirkus Reviews

'This is Garner in expansive mood writing gracefully about everything from her family to ballet to the dawn service.' - The Spectator

'Garner's style celebrates and enacts containment and minimalism... Its tenderness and brutality cultivate fruitful and interesting kitchen table conversations spanning the grace and indignity of being all too human.' - Age/Sydney Morning Herald

[Garner's] writing expresses a hard-won grace. It brings you closer to the world, and shows you how to love it... She has laid the groundwork for a generation of writers; she has repeatedly shown us the glory and the power of an English sentence.' - Monthly

'It's an enormous, miscellaneous range of subject matter, made all the more compelling by the luxuriant strength of Garner's prose - each phrase considered and crafted in the manner of an artisan. Everywhere I Look is a delicious literary degustation in which each morsel is its own reward.' - Qantas Magazine

'[Garner's] forensic understanding of the sentence make her paragraphs an illusorily clean and easy read... She teaches me how to write again.' - Jennifer Down, Lifted Brow

'A perfect book for a brief escape. Short stories full of emotion and life. Stories that lift you up and draw you in... Wonderfully written.' - Farrago

Read together, the collection in Everywhere I Look offers both an intimate insight into its author and a piercing view of the world we all share. Sometimes uplifting and illuminating, sometimes reflective and poignant, sometimes cranky and bleak, it is an absorbing, enriching read that will likely be dipped into again and again.' - InDaily

'Fantastically accessible... Garner writes warmly and generously. She often brings into her stories characters from her life with no introduction, as if you must surely know them yourself." - Lip Mag

"If you are looking for a voice to speak to you frankly and with humor and warmth about important things, here is the writer for you. Well known in Australia as a novelist and screenwriter and reporter, Garner is also one of the world's best essayists. Here she is thinking about the indignities of how people treat the aging, the pleasures of a ukulele, grandmothering, and some of her best friends, who she sketches with a master's economy of gesture. Once you start reading Garner you will wonder what the huge space inside your head she occupies used to be there for." --John Freeman, LitHub

"Her unsentimental, but not heartless, accounts demonstrate her range and capacity for emotional accuracy in the face of difficulty. Garner uses her powers of observation to confront unpleasant truths. Her graceful prose will challenge readers to look at the world around them." - Library Journal

"Reading this collection of essays is like having a long conversation with a clever, funny, big-hearted, magnificently acerbic friend. It left me astonished all over again by Garner' s deft handling of whatever subject she chooses. There are pieces here that crackle and fizz with the pleasure she takes in her grandchildren, reading, a good martini, and playing the ukulele...Everywhere I Look made me laugh, cry, and think. It is a book to return to again and again with gratitude. " - Best Books of 2016, Radio National

'The entire experience of reading Helen Garner, the puzzled 'ah but . .' of her proposition, opens up the sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious discord of our lives. She may have begun acting here as an emotionally engrossing memoirist, but the reader comes away with much more than may have been intended.' - Irish Times

'A captivating collection... No matter the topic, Garner is a charming and courageous writer whose distinctive voice exemplifies the range of what is possible in personal writing.' - Publishers Weekly

'There is nothing casual or accidental about Everywhere I Look... Its curated sense of a series of engagements with place, people, and objects, presents a way of writing autobiography which seems unintentional, yet coherent all the same... Helen Garner in this latest work adds to our thinking about writing, how it is done, and for what purpose.' - Australian Book Review

"She covers topics that others are really afraid of, that really penetrate the human condition, which is something I admire and that has inspired me in my own work." - Virginia Haussegger, Sydney Morning Herald

Garner brings to the collection not only her tremendous powers of observation but a continued employment of those skills to force readers to confront unpleasant truths. The graceful prose with which she delivers her insights will challenge readers to look at what is happening around them.' - Library Journal (starred review)

'It's totally bizarre that Garner isn't a household name in the UK (she's Australian). Everything she writes is a small masterpiece. These are collected bits of writing - diary entries, essays, articles, reviews, columns. It includes the most blistering, savage, funny and magnificent piece about getting old, called 'The Insults of Age', which is worth the cover price alone. Buy it for your mother for Christmas.' - Metro

"I will read every word [Garner] ever writes." - Herald Sun

"For years, Garner has offered me a model for journalism: a careful observer, she also tells us how those observations change her as well as the subjects of her gaze. Garner reveals her nervous system but also the dubious games and improvisations of journalism. Everywhere I Look is a collection of Garner's essays and diary entries from the past 15 years. She writes on friendship, ageing, film and literature. In The Journey of the Stamp Animals she writes of rediscovering a children's book that many years earlier had seemed so stuffed with illicit magic. Now an adult, this long dreamt-of book in her hands again, she finds the pleasure of having her memory - so often fickle and corruptible - vindicated. The book is as she remembered. It's a measure of Garner's talent that this small, obscure triumph carries the feeling of profundity." --Martin McKenzie, Guardian