The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

November 7, 2017

November 7, 1942

Helen Garner (November 7, 1942) is an Australian writer. She is famous for her fiction and nonfiction books. Naturalistic depictions characterize both categories. And cat references are common.

These excerpts really are random. Here are glimpses of her nonfiction.

Joe Cinque's Consolation: A true story of death, grief and the law (2004) is about the murder of a young man by his girl friend. The cat is part of the depiction of a home.

Their surviving son Anthony, a desperately thin young man in his early twenties, slept all day and rose desolate and paranoid, his face tormented with pimples: he drifted in and out of the room, smoking and seldom speaking. The big black cat, too, came and went, but Mrs. Cinque stayed.

Or, from a book titled
True Stories: Selected Non-Fiction (1997)

I do remember buying for a dollar a battered old copy of a 1950s translation of the New Testament in the Cat Protection Society op shop on my way along Enmore Road to work. I remember taking it to my work room, reading a few pages, then ....deciding to sit there and read the whole damn thing.

Helen Garner has won many prizes. In 2016 though, the announcement of one prize was thought a joke.


"An Australian author says she "fell off her chair" when she discovered an email about a $150,000 (A$207,000; £106,000) literary award was not a hoax.

Helen Garner initially dismissed the message from Yale University as a hoax.

"I thought what the hell is this? Somebody's having me on," Ms Garner told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

She was going to delete the email but thought to call her publisher, who informed her that the Windham-Campbell prize was in fact real....

She was not the only author to be taken aback by the surprise award, because the prizes have no submission process. "Writers are judged anonymously and unaware that they are in the running," Yale says on its website. "

Our author.





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