Looking out the window at the two big gum trees, as it gets dark, I think: the only way I can go on keeping a diary - the bits about myself, anyway, i.e.

most of it - is to conceive of it as a record of soul. Helen Garner has kept a diary for most of her adult life. Now she is widely recognised as one of the greatest writers of our age.

But, of all her books, it is her diaries that she likes best. Collected for the first time into one volume, these inimitable diaries show Garner like never before: as a fledging author in bohemian Melbourne, publishing her lightning-rod debut novel while raising a young daughter in the 1970s; in the throes of an all-consuming love affair in the 1980s; and clinging to a disintegrating marriage in the 1990s. How to End a Story reveals the inner life of a woman in love, a mother, a friend and a formidable writer at work.

Told with devastating honesty, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life, it offers all the satisfactions of a novel alongside the enthralling intimacy of something written in private and just for pleasure.