To commit one's insecurities to a private diary is an act of bravery. To make that diary public is courage of an even greater order of magnitude. That's the gift Australian author Helen Garner (The Children's Bach) has given the world in the three diaries now collected into one magnificent 800-page volume titled How to End a Story. The first, "The Yellow Notebook," covers 1978-87, when Garner was married to her second husband, of whom she writes, "How lucky I am to be married to this lovely guy!" This good fortune lasts until their divorce and her affair with a married writer she calls V. The second volume, "One Day I'll Remember This," 1987-95, chronicles her marriage to V. The third volume, "How to End a Story," 1995-98, charts the dissolution of that marriage after V begins an affair with a painter referred to as X.
Amid accounts of trivial moments one would expect to see in a diary, such as teaching herself to embroider and buying a sprinkler, Garner confides in this brilliantly constructed account the personal and professional challenges she had to contend with during the period when she became an internationally celebrated author. She describes the rift her success caused in her marriage, her doubts about her writing abilities, and most terrifyingly, the discovery of a cyst on her ovaries. During an acute bout of uncertainty, she confides, "Each morning I set out for my office weak with fear. I will never be a great writer." Sorry to break the news, but she was wrong. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer