GarnerRama - The Children’s Bach

So how we decided that we would format the first half for the Children's Bike Book Club is that we have prepared questions for each other and not told each other what those questions are.

So I'm going to start off with one that I think we should both answer to sort of put this into context, which is.

The connected question of when did you first read this particular Ghana and how does that fit in with your history of reading Ghana in general?

Yeah.

So I first read it, I was 19 years old.

I was living in Melbourne.

I was living in Northcote.

I was living right near the Mary Creek.

And I read Monkey Grip and then I read The Children's Bark.

And I had never read Where I Lived before.

That was really notable as a Melburnian, as an inner north person, and especially like Monkey Grip, you know, she's riding a bicycle around.

That's what I do.

I ride my bicycle everywhere.

And I just thought she was writing about me and it was weird and I didn't fully grasp it.

And I think especially with The Children's Bark, At that age, I did not appreciate the intricacies of being a woman with responsibilities and a life and wanting to escape that because I was 19 and I didn't have a huge number of responsibilities.

So I think it's been reading it as an adult and it's probably a book I read every five years, more or less, that every time I come back to it I realise, like now I'm well past the age that Ghana was when she wrote this, but it's still incredibly prevalent and relevant and, yeah, it's left a big mark on me.

How about you?

This is interesting.

I'm basically the opposite.

I only read The Children's Bark for the first time for Garnerama on News and Reviews.

That's two years ago now.

And my familiarity with Garner is like almost in reverse chronology where I came at her through the nonfiction because of all the legal stuff and that my previous life, RIP, thank God.

And then, so did all of the big non-fictions and then went back and read Monkey, Great Monkey and Children's Bark and sort of had this kind of like retroactive, explosive realisation of the history that sort of she had come from.

And when I first read the Children's Bark, I couldn't believe how...

Little it had been spoken about in proportion to how excellent I felt it was.