How To Tell A Story – 21 November 2025

Last week letters, this week diaries. Will our curiosity ever be satisfied? I hope not. Reading Helen Garner’s diaries, How to End a Story is utterly addictive. ‘Oh, just one more,’ I think, abandoning my bookmark. ‘Another won’t hurt,’ I say to the clock warning that it’s time to open the shop. ‘Actually, it makes sense to finish this section,’ I reassure myself, ‘then I’ll stop; I can stop at any time.’ My attitude is very similar to that when faced with a box of chocolate truffles.

Garner’s diaries span twenty years, beginning in 1978 when her daughter is nine, her first novel Monkey Grip has recently been published and one marriage has ended while another is underway. But that is not what one is here for – there are no such broad explanations, few details of place, no names and no dates apart from the year of each diary.

The gap between two sections which look closely connected in thought could be hours or days. The student with the ‘500-watt blue eyes… that cause the person on whom they rest to feel a significance he almost certainly does not intend,’ may feature for that one sentence alone or could be one of those whose conversation about cliché is quoted later. Whose wedding is it that garners the review ‘Two good rousing hymns were sung… But why was she marrying this man, who is plainly unworthy of her?’ What has the author read to elicit the reaction, ‘I was astonished at the violence of the short story. The control the writer thinks he has of it is the control that a furiously angry driver has of a car, a person who ought to be kept from the wheel until he recovers his temper: the narrative voice makes grinding changes, throws itself into sickening halts and turns. The last few sentences are a head hitting the windscreen.’?

We do not know; a big picture builds but from the small scale. We are here for the close attention, for the real story encapsulated in the look passing between two people while someone else speaks, the overheard gibes, the cynicism and the wish to be less cynical, the self-doubt in the afternoon slump, the small victories and terrible exhaustions of motherhood and what one thinks about when washing up.

I can hear Garner’s piano practice, feel the pain when she hits her knee so hard that ‘things went colourless,’ see the moon so large over the river that she wants to stop the people passing to share it and taste the bad coffee affecting her conversation with ‘J’ about God and writing.

You don’t need to have read Helen Garner’s work or know anything about her to come to these diaries and discover so much. (Though reading them will certainly make you want to read more by her – The Children’s Bach is outstanding.) You will tear through them like candy but the writing still exists once consumed.

Can one call it keeping a diary if every day is 18 November? This week, the third in the On the Calculation of Volume series was published. It has been 18 November now for 1144 days. Inexplicably, Faber published this on 20 November. Come on, people.

If you have yet to begin Solvej Balle’s extraordinary books, please clear your schedule. In book I, Tara, an antiquarian bookseller, travels to an auction on 17 November, meets an old friend who runs an antique coin shop and calls her husband to report on her day. At the hotel breakfast the next morning she picks up the newspaper, orders coffee and sees a guest dropping a piece of bread. On what should be the next day, the paper is still dated 18 November and the same guest drops a piece of bread in the same place at the same time. Never has such simple clumsiness caused such horror. The eighteenth is repeating itself and time moves forward for Tara alone.

In book II, she travels to different climates to try to create some semblance of the seasons, to follow a year that she imagines is running underneath the endless 18 Novembers. In book III, well… let’s just say that my mind is exploding. How is it so electrifying to read a story about being stuck? Book IV is due to be published on 9 April 2026. But how can we ever get there? What is time?

Since we are doing the time warp again, I must mention Tim Curry’s memoir Vagabond, which is as filled with poignancy as it is with cocaine. If you are looking for it in the shop, it’s just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right. You know the rest.

Finally, in this season of indulgence, I wrote to you last week about Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin. Since then I have devoured three more of her novels. (Thank goodness there are also her short stories and food writing yet to be enjoyed.) They are marvellous. They are exquisite love stories, elegant family dramas, studies of character – bright, shining things.

Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object is about a young widow falling in love with her brother-in-law and playing the piano. A Big Storm Knocked it Over is about a book designer, recently married (‘late’ in life, at thirty-seven), her brilliant best friend, the true love of her life, and Sven, who mercilessly flirts with her, especially when she is pregnant. I think my favourite is Happy All the Time in which Guido and Vincent, fall in love with Holly and Misty respectively, two women they adore and fail to understand. Reading Laurie Colwin is like sliding into a deliciously scented and slightly too hot bath.

If you know someone who needs more warm hugs in book form, that happens to be the theme of one of our festive subscriptions: find out about our four themed subscriptions here. Since we are talking about Christmas, do note all the silliness happening in or near The Heronry, including our annual party next Thursday. Steve Page will be playing songs inspired by books (The Time Warp notwithstanding), many of us will be dressing as our favourite book cover or character and I have it on good-ish authority that a bookseller may enjoy herself so much as to endanger the publication of next week’s newsletter. Heaven forfend.

May your weekend be outright indulgent,
Lizzie