Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip explores the loosely defined relationship of a young couple in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Javo, a young man hooked on hard drugs, does something hurtful – sleeps with someone else, steals, takes Nora for granted, lies; Nora gets angry, stews in her rage for a while, maybe sleeps with someone else, goes away for a little while. Nora and Javo’s paths cross again and her anger and hatred melt away at the sight of him, all too easily forgetting all the damage and pain that he has caused her. This cycle repeats itself over 245 pages.

Dear Javo, there’s a few things you ought to know, mostly involving things like elementary courtesy. Eh? Like saying hullo; like not making that ludicrous adolescent gap between how you behave toward me at night when we sleep together and how you act in public as if we hardly knew each other. Don’t get me wrong: I can recognize a desperate man when I see one. I don’t want a flood of attention. Just hullo would do, so I don’t have to wonder if I’ve been hallucinating other times we’ve been together. Good luck to you, Javo, I like you, but you give me a hard time. Still like to see you, sometime.

I liked reading about my hometown of Melbourne thirty years ago; at one point Nora visits a bookshop and walks a few blocks to a pub – a path that I myself have walked many times over the years. The mention of street names and places gave me a sense of pride of place, a brief moment of recognition. I expected to really like this book – I enjoyed the film adaptation – but it was just dull. Given the cyclical and destructive nature of the patterns of behaviour that Nora and Javo continued to fall into, there was no way to escape it, no real way to conclude the narrative. The end felt weak and bland; given what we know about Nora’s behaviour, surely we can surmise that her and Javo (or, Javo and junk) will, eventually, be drawn back together again? Monkey Grip gives the distinct impression that we are not supposed to see this inevitability as sad or immature or desperate, but as romantic.