Australian writer Helen Garner has been turning the fabric of her life into unforgettable literature for almost 50 years. Speaking to Georgina Godwin on Meet the Writers, Garner discusses the diaries that have shaped her work, the chaos of her earlier years and the serenity of being a grandmother.

Let’s start at the beginning. Take us back to Paris in the late 1970s – what was life like?
I moved to France with my daughter when she was eight. I had just published Monkey Grip and received a grant from the Australia Council that would sustain us for a few years. So I thought, let’s live in Paris! My daughter picked up French in about five minutes but I never quite felt at ease. I was used to big hippie houses in Melbourne, full of single mothers and children in happy chaos. Paris felt alien. I eventually realised that I had nothing to do with that place and it had nothing to do with me. We moved back to Australia but I had met a lovely Frenchman while in Paris. He came back with us and we married. Though we have since parted, I still have great warmth for him.

One of the pleasures of your diaries is their domestic detail; the cherry-red boots, the soap-dish quarrels. How do such moments become material?
I’ve always kept a diary. I use my immediate surroundings as subject matter. A quarrel about who cleaned the soap dish can loom as large as a major fight when you’re writing on an intimate scale. Those things carry weight: they reveal how people really live together.

And yet there were big fights too, such as that unforgettable kitchen scene.
Yes. I discovered a letter from my husband – my third husband – to the woman I suspected he was having an affair with. I went berserk. There was beetroot soup on the wall; it looked like blood, though no one had actually been killed. I even had a hammer in my hand. A friend told me, “Helen, put the hammer down.” And I did.

The diary format seems perfect for that immediacy.
It suits me. My novels were always close to being non-fiction anyway. Writing in a diary taught me to seize the moment as it happens.

Are you still keeping a diary?
Oh yes. I steady myself by making a record of things and trying to tell myself the truth. These days I write about being a grandmother. Living nextdoor and helping raise my grandchildren has been the happiest time of my life. I probably won’t publish those diaries; they belong to them as much as they do to me.

You sound content.
I am. After my third marriage ended, I thought that I’d given it my best shot. I decided that I’m not going to try again. And that’s when real happiness started.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation on ‘Meet The Writers’ on Monocle Radio.