5/29/2023 0 Comments Monkey Grip by Helen Garner![]() ![]() I hadn’t reckoned with the grit, nor with what would be required of me, nor with what readiness I would give it… People like Javo need people like me, steadier, to circle round for a while and from my centre, held there by children’s needs, I stare longingly outwards at his rootlessness. He was twenty-three then and maybe, I ignorantly surmised, wouldn’t get much older, because of the junk and dangerous idleness in the bloodstream. The story is told from Nora’s perspective as she manages her six-year-old daughter, Gracie their life in various share-houses and her intimate relationships. I was comforted by Javo’s gentleness but I knew the gentleness of the departing to the one left behind. ![]() Neither stop and that is essentially the beginning and end of the story. As frequently as Javo says he is giving up drugs, Nora says she’s done with Javo. It’s predominantly a story of addiction – Javo has a drug habit and Nora has a ‘Javo-habit’. ![]() ![]() Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip unpicks the relationship between Nora and Javo. As teenagers, that sort of relationship drama seems to be part of the adolescent experience, but once you’re in your twenties and thirties the debriefings and speculation over what has been said and done wears thin. We’ve all known a couple that breaks up and gets back together over and over again. ![]()
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