Helen Garner My Hard Heart

A detailed Summary of Helen Garner My Hard Heart

Helen Garner, in her short story collection, My Hard Heart, uses a wide variety of different narrative perspectives. Each type of narration is closely linked with, and special to, the story or experience being told. Susan Hosking, describes Garners writing style as an 'ability to refine subject matters that meaning emerges from accumulated detail rather than exhaustive explanation or description. 'The life of Art' is a story meant to tell of a life, of the length of a friendship and does so by appearing in disjointed little snippets of events that happen throughout that life, in first person and mostly beginning with "my friend." 'Postcards from Surfers' uses a normal conversational type of narration, with the story told in first person again, immediately centering the tale around the main character speaking and illumination the struggles of the protagonist. Their view of the people around them is shown by the replies made to questions or the type of conversation made by surrounding characters. Different again, is 'All Those Bloody Young Catholics." Brilliant use of narration here immediately sets the scene for the story and tells the reader about its characters, the constant ramble of words.

"But what about the principle of the wetsuit?" I say

"Look at those idiots" says my father

'Postcards from Surfers' is about the central character trying to negotiate her relationships with her father and the mysterious Phillip. This is reflected by the use of first person in the narration, the story being told by the central female character. The conversational style of the story shows the reality of this character's life, and its relative normality, plodding along in the human condition,

'My friend cut lemons into chunks and dropped them in to water jug when we had no money for wine.'

"The must be freezing" says my mother

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Approximate Word count = 1279
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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