I managed to miss Helen Garner's early fiction so I came to her brilliant non-fiction via Joe Cinque's Consolation stunned by her intelligence, bravery, and unerring sensitivity to the travails of others. These qualities are also evident in The Feel of Steel but even further pronounced is her personal honesty and fearless self-revelation. This might sound self-indulgent, and there are times that the book strays close to wankery, especially when she berates writing and writers with her back-handed compliments that only a professional writer could get away with. But on the whole, it is a moody, thought-provoking writing exercise that is altogether too brief.The book is also quite sad for a lot of the time. It roughly charts the breakdown and repercussions of Garner's third marriage - even though she is far too original to bore us with details or wailings of "why me?". Although it goes close at times, and the slow but apparent paring away of her former life in Sydney and return to her home in Melbourne is sometimes extremely moving, but never cloying. She manages to retain an admirable joie de vivre most of the time, ruminating on the motivations of birds and describing her feelings more than once as "unbearably thrilling". It's this optimistic spirit that keeps the reader close to her - no turgid descriptions of days lost bitterly crying or shopping here - this is certainly not chick-lit.
The stories, mostly brief, some longer, take as their studies the emerging experiences of an older woman/person coming to terms with inexorable aging. There are lovely observations about grandmother- and mother- and daughterhood, glittering reminiscences, wry acceptances of lessons learned. I enjoyed them all, as far from my experience as they are, and it was only one story that lost me, the last and one of the longest, which documents a session spent with a friend at a bridal salon. I actually feared, as I bogged down in descriptions of fabrics, tantrums and weeping mothers, that maybe I was the bitter one. Perhaps I was not generous enough to allow her just one story with an unforgivingly female focus. Possibly I had Garner wrong all along and this was chick-lit, just really well-written. To explain, the story cycle that touched me the most was the eponymous The Feel of Steel (in three parts) which explains Garner's return to her childhood sport of fencing: an admittedly masculine venture. But on re-reading it, I realised it was in fact the female perspective that I found most scintillating - this is voyeuristic non-fiction at its very best; the feel of steel is palpable.
So I can allow her the one exclusive story. Helen Garner is one of our premier storytellers, and I can't wait to delve into her fiction, old and new. But I will seek out her other non-fiction first, including the controversial The First Stone. She is a renegade, a shit-stirrer, uncompromisingly original and brutally honest. I think she is very brave and very clever, and we are lucky she's all ours.
The wrap-up:
Australian themes - Garner is way too worldly to become parochial so she invests universal themes with a local flavour - the ennui of Ausralian suburbs could be any developed country.
Australian characters - You will recognise all of the characters that populate her life, but the most dominating character is Garner herself, constantly straining against the fetters of an orthodox existence.
Australian settings - Apart from an hilarious foray into Southeast Asia, the settings are post-war and modern Melbourne and Sydney.
Australian voices - Yep, she's Australian alright. If only all of us were so eloquent!
Australian focus - Garner sets her sights on many of the facets of Australian life - and is sometimes harsh in her criticisms, but her humour and wonderment win through: she is genuinely fascinated by all of us.
