Reviews round-up
How To End a Story: Collected Diaries
by Helen Garner
3 of 4 critics positive
5 reviews: 2 raves, 1 positive, 1 mixed; 1 not stating a verdict in public
What the critics said
“the greatest journals since Virginia Woolf’s”
How To End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner review – the greatest journals since Virginia Woolf’s
“match her fiction in their brilliance”
Review | Helen Garner’s diaries match her fiction in their brilliance
“‘small, random stabs of extreme interestingness’ captured on the page”
How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner review – ‘small, random stabs of extreme interestingness’ captured on the page
“filled me with nostalgia for all the bollocks we had to listen to back in the day”
Anne Enright · I stab and stab: Helen Garner’s Diaries
‘My 10,000 Hours’: The Diaries That Made Helen Garner a Writer (Published 2025)
Verdicts are read from each outlet's own headline and summary; quotes are their words, credited and linked. Where a paywalled summary does not give the critic's view, we say so rather than guess. How it works.
