The Season by Helen Garner

Since the runaway success of her first book, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, Helen Garner has steadily established herself as one of Australia’s most honoured writers. She has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books, as well as dramas, short stories, essays, screenplays and children’s fiction. She has collected almost all Australian literary prizes and even a Walkley Award for articles in Time magazine. Three of her books have been made into successful movies.

Helen has a reputation for writing beautiful lyrical prose, as well as for calling a spade a spade and adapting many of her themes from personal lived experiences.

One of her latest works is The Season, a passionate and empathetic book, written with typical self-effacement, humour and understanding of human nature. If you come from Melbourne and/or love AFL football you will adore this book. Even if you don’t, you may gain many insights, laughs and a few happy tears.

Helen is a fanatical fan of the Western Bulldogs AFL club, but admits that she doesn’t really understand the complexities of the game. As she aged and her grandchildren matured, she decided to follow the fortunes of her youngest grandson’s under-16 football team by attending every training session and all competition games for an entire season. At first, she remained detached and was regarded as an eccentric old woman with a notebook who sat shivering in the rain or sheltered from the wind beside the boundary rail. But in time she became a valued member of the team and even carried out the oranges in breaks between quarters. Then she wrote what she described as “a nanna’s book about footy.”

The Season recounts how a grandmother followed her grandson for an entire AFL junior season. She marvelled at how he matured from a gangly sixteen-year-old to near manhood in a single season with the Flemington Colts Under 16s. By season’s end she still didn’t really understand all the rules, although she admired the athleticism, kinship and focus of the players, all the while keeping an eye out for her beloved Western Bulldogs in the AFL.

This is not your average sports book, perhaps more of a love story of a grandmother for her grandson as they slog together through the mud and cold of a Melbourne winter. Helen accurately records in her notebooks what she sees and hears at training and games. It is a surprisingly intimate and moving firsthand account of love and commitment within a close-knit family.

Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member