Monkey Grip (novel)

Monkey Grip

First edition
Author Helen Garner
Country Australia
Language English
Publisher McPhee Gribble
Publication date
 1977
Media type Print
Pages 245
ISBN 0-14-004953-3
OCLC 11950836
823 19
LC Class PR9619.3.G3 M6 1984
Followed by Honour & Other People's Children

Monkey Grip (1977) is a novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, her first published book. It initially received a mixed critical reception, but has now become accepted as a classic of modern Australian literature. A film based on the novel, also titled Monkey Grip, was released in 1982.

Plot summary

The novel is set in inner city suburbs of Melbourne in the mid 1970s. Nora and her young daughter live in a succession of share houses. She is in love with Javo, a heroin addict, who repeatedly drifts out of Nora's life, then back into it again.[1] 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.[2]

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'".[3]

Critical reception

Monkey Grip initially met with a mixed reception.[4] It is now recognised as a classic of modern Australian literature.[5]

Movie adaptation

In 1982, the novel was adapted to the film Monkey Grip directed by Ken Cameron from his own screenplay. The lead actors were Noni Hazlehurst and Colin Friels.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Tegan Bennett Daylight (3 November 2012). "A phone call to Helen Garner". The Australian. News Corp Australia. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Frizell, Helen (13 October 1978). "The year's best books - 1. Helen Garner's Monkey Grip". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
  3. ↑ Goldsworthy, Kerryn (1996) Australian Writers: Helen Garner, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, p. 28
  4. ↑ Goldsworthy (1996) p. 1
  5. ↑ Featured Modern Classics at Penguin Classics
  6. ↑ Monkey Grip at the Internet Movie Database
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