How to End a Story: Collected Diaries 1978-1998

Winner of the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

Helen Garner's acclaimed three volumes of diaries are collected here in one sumptuous book.

'I revere Helen Garner's writing, and it's in her diaries that she's at her acute, rigorous, pitch-perfect best.' Nigella Lawson

Spanning two decades-from the publication of her lightning-rod debut novel in the late 70s, to the throes of a consuming affair in the late 80s, and the messiness and pain of a disintegrating marriage in the late 90s-the diaries reveal the life of one of the world's greatest writers.

Devastatingly honest and disarmingly funny, How to End a Story is a portrait of loss, betrayal, and the sheer force of a woman's anger – but also of hard work and resilience, moments of hope and joy, the immutable ties of motherhood, and the regenerative power of a room of one's own.