Monkey Grip (1977)

Monkey Grip is a 1977 novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, her first published book. Set in Melbourne, the novel follows single-mother Nora as she narrates her increasingly tumultuous relationship with a heroin addict, juxtaposed with her raising a daughter while living in bohemian share houses.

The novel initially received a mixed critical reception while achieving notoriety for its astute, uncompromising depiction of heroin addiction, sexuality, relationships and love. Garner later admitted that there was an autobiographical element to the novel, with much of its plot being diaristic and based on her own experiences. Despite dividing early critics, the book sold well and helped establish Garner as one of the best-known writers in Australia. In the 1990s, when critics identified the Australian literary genre of grunge lit, Monkey Grip was retrospectively categorised as a seminal example. It is now widely considered a classic of modern Australian literature and one of Australia's "first contemporary novels", and has been called the "voice of a generation".

A film based on the novel, also titled Monkey Grip, was released in 1982. In 2018, Monkey Grip was ranked 47th by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in its list of the "100 stories that shaped the world"—the only Australian novel on the list.

Plot summary

The novel is set in the inner city suburbs of Melbourne in the mid-1970s. The characters inhabit a lively social circle, frequenting cafés, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, pubs and clubs in the city. Nora, a single mother in her thirties, and her young daughter Grace, live in a succession of share houses. Nora is in love with the notoriously unreliable Javo, a twentysomething heroin addict, who repeatedly drifts in and out of Nora's life. Other characters, including Rita, a single mother and Nora's housemate, Gerald, Francis, Joss, Bill, Willy, Claire, and Martin (a former flame of Nora's), also drift in and out of the story. Most of the characters are artists, actors and creative types; many of them frequent the Fitzroy baths in summer. Nora, a freelance journalist, takes small acting gigs in independent films and edits a women's newspaper between jobs to make ends meet.

Nora's relationship with the flaky Javo is first put under strain when he is arrested in Bangkok for drug possession. As he returns, their relationship seems to ebb and flow: while, at a high point, the tentative couple, along with Nora's daughter Grace, go on trips across the country – first to Hobart, then a road trip to Sydney – at its lowest point, Javo steals from the share house to support his heroin habit and disappears for days on end, leaving Nora to wonder about his whereabouts and contemplate his return.

As their relationship intensifies, Nora questions how much of herself will be left if she is wrenched away by a love that is doomed to end. As their relationship approaches eventual disintegration due to Javo's drug addiction, deception, and unsavoury behaviour, Nora takes a short trip to Anglesea to clear her mind. Around this time, Javo seduces Nora's friend Claire, while Nora – drained and depersonalised from their relationship – returns home, forced to start anew and contemplate her feelings about their fleeting, destructive love affair.

Publication and title

Much of the novel was based on Helen Garner's own experiences living in sharehouses in Fitzroy and Carlton in the mid-1970s – the relationship between Nora and Javo is based on a relationship Garner had during her time living in sharehousing while raising her daughter. Most of the novel was written in the Latrobe Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria.

Upon completion, Garner took a manuscript to Colin Talbot at Outback Press. This early draft did not feature the love story between Nora and Javo. Talbot suggested Garner try to shape her writing into a narrative, fleshing out certain relationships she had written about. After making significant changes by inserting the romantic relationship between Nora and Javo, Garner finally sent a copy to McPhee Gribble, an independent publishing house in Melbourne run by two women, after it was rejected by one male editor at a large Melbourne publishing house for being "too emotional".

Di Gribble of McPhee Gribble, the book's first publisher, wrote that the title of the novel referred to both a linking of hands and the monkey on your back of drug addiction.

Themes

Kerryn Goldsworthy writes that almost all of Garner's fiction addresses "the relationship between sexual behaviour and social organisation; the anarchic nature of desire and the orderly face of the institution of 'family'". The plot point of Nora's obsessive love for Javo is matched by Javo's addiction to heroin – although the source of obsession is different for both people, it possesses a similarly destructive power over a person.

Writer Jean-François Vernay opined in his book A Brief Take on the Australian Novel (2016) that though Garner was writing about a love affair, the novel, as well as the grunge literary genre it heralded, is not about love but rather "the disintegration of love", exploring the lives of alienated or romantically cynical city-dwellers who, in an attempt to escape the stressors and boredom of modern city life, indulge in reckless sexual behaviour which only provides them instant, short lived gratification over long-term meaningful, fulfilling couplings.

The book makes numerous references to the sacred Chinese divination text I Ching (translated in English as the Book of Changes), which Nora consults several times for guidance on her relationship with Javo, noting the synchronicities aligning with her life events. The I Ching's roots go back to mythical times, and comes in contemporary form from about 3000 B.C.