The acclaimed writer spent a season watching her grandson play football. The result is a story of love in the face of time’s passing.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Helen Garner’s decision to write a first-person account of her grandson’s junior footy team, its travails and triumphs and her exploration of both the game and his exit from adolescence, was replete with self-doubt. She wondered whether she was up to the task of writing a happy story. Aged 81 when she began following the Flemington Colts, she was unsure whether she was capable of completing the book.
Over the course of this 2023 season, Garner became a participant, which she said was evident when she began calling the Colts “we”.“I just became emotionally involved,” she says. “I mean, I sort of scream and rave at watching the Western Bulldogs on TV, I get really emotionally involved with those matches, and you know things that I see about footy can make me burst into tears of rage like watching people boo Buddy Franklin.
We turn to that passage. “It’s the last grandchild and I’m suddenly thinking I’m not going to be around much longer,” Garner explains. “I reckon I’ve got maybe 10 years, touch wood. I thought my grandmother life is almost over and how can I let this go past without giving it a really good look?” The book started from a place of curiosity. “I just wanted to see what he was like as a person ... I thought ‘I wonder what he’s like out there’, and it was very interesting to me to watch him functioning in the world.”The Western Bulldogs are the book’s counterpoint and subplot, since they are followed by the merged households and especially by Dave, Amby’s father, who grew up in St Albans and is visibly shattered when the Dogs are upset by West Coast.
“And I know there’s so much more going on in the lives of young boys that is very quiet ... there’s a lot of inner struggle going on, I think, to be a boy and to turn into a man. “By the time I realised there was a book in it, I was delighted and happy and I thought ‘I can do this’.”
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Kangaroos star Garner a ‘generational’ AFLW talentNorth Melbourne coach Darren Crocker has labelled Jasmine Garner a generational player, saying her selflessness and hot form are helping drive the team forward.
Read more »
Kangaroos star Garner a ‘generational’ AFLW talentNorth Melbourne coach Darren Crocker has labelled Jasmine Garner a generational player, saying her selflessness and hot form are helping drive the team forward.
Read more »
Tasmanian coroner finds Mark Bird 'was involved' in his wife Helen Bird's death in 2010Helen Bird's friends never believed she would take her own life, leaving behind her three children. Fourteen years later, a coroner rules her husband made her death look like a suicide.
Read more »
Helen Mirren: it’s so sad Kurt Cobain died before GPS was inventedThe Oscar-winning actor has made the latest in a series of references to the Nirvana frontman and the technological advances he didn’t live to see
Read more »
‘If they don’t get care, they die’: the woman who runs the world’s largest kidney dialysis companyHelen Giza of FME is excited about the possibilities new drugs such as Ozempic could offer for renal patients
Read more »
Max Dupain: A Portrait by Helen Ennis review – the man who took Australia’s most famous photoIn this very readable and moving biography, the Sunbaker photographer comes across as someone who spoke against his myth – but also traded on it until the end
Read more »