It’s footy season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson’s under-16s team. She not only goes to every game (give or take), but to every training session too, shivering on the sidelines at dusk, fascinated by the spectacle.
She’s a passionate Western Bulldogs fan (with an imperfect grasp of the rules) who loves the epic theatre of AFL football. But her devotion to the under-16s offers her something else. This is her chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him before he rushes headlong into manhood. To witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for his team as it fights for a place in the finals.
With her sharp eye, her generous wit and her warm humour, Garner documents this pivotal moment, both as part of the story and as silent witness. The Season is an unexpected and exuberant book: a celebration of the nobility, grace and grit of team spirit, a reflection on the nature of masculinity, and a tribute to the game’s power to thrill us.
Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham - Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2019. And in 2023 she was awarded the ASA Medal for her outstanding contribution to Australian literature. Her works include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, The Spare Room, This House of Grief and three volumes of her diaries. She lives in Melbourne.
‘[Garner] is working in epic mode in The Season as she examines familiar themes and preoccupations: masculinity and its codes, the pleasures and contradictions of social groups, what it means to bear witness...Garner has always been an extraordinary stylist and in The Season her prose, athletic, soars and dances, just like those young footballers.’ Guardian
‘The Season is marked by [Helen Garner’s] unsparing eye for detail and that superpower of detachment - a narrator who sees everything yet who is also deeply involved in the story, with emotional flourishes that rise when she watches her grandson.’ Age
‘Startling in its candour and compelling in its nakedness...A marvellous paean to the glories of youth just shy of the treacheries of manhood.’ Australian
‘A strong, beautiful book...The Garner of The Season is the Garner her readers know, with her exceptional control over language, her exceptional skill at observing and describing.’ Saturday Papers
‘Incredibly tender. About the seasons of football and the season of life...Written in her beautiful prose...I think people will enjoy it very much.’ Jason Steger, ABC RN The Bookshelf, Best Books of 2024
‘The sentences are precise and they sing. [Garner] turns from philosophical reverie on mortality, or violence, or masculine shame, to capturing the looseness and love with which a family talks footy...It’s a book of gentle pleasures and deep meanings...As ever, when you put a Helen Garner book down and look up at the world again, you do so with newly sharpened eyes.’ Monthly
‘One of Australia’s greatest living writers.’ Canberra Times
‘A deeply talented and intelligent writer...In this book performed in a minor key, Garner the grandmother is on song, displaying the very qualities she exalts in athletes: candour, discipline, vigilance and valour.’ Conversation