Drugs, Sex and challenging progressive social politics. Monkey Grip reviewed

Firstly, if you haven't read it, you can find a summary here

My first impressions were, honestly, that the critical reviews were quite valid: Monkey Grip is repetitive, the story is stagnant, the characters frustrating and you find yourself wondering why you’re even continuing with the story. Personally, I continued simply because of the ego boost I got from reading on the train while everyone else is on their phone.

But, as I continued, I found myself hooked. So here is why it is worth your time. 

A pool in Fitzroy, Melbourne. The pool is a recurring setting in Monkey Grip. The first chapter is titled. 'Aqua Profonda'

Firstly, the structure, or lack thereof, breaking away from all expectations of narrative structure, was frustrating, but effective nonetheless. The book is, very simply, about everyday life which, often, doesn’t have rising conflict, a climax (though Nora herself seems to have quite a few), and a resolution and thus this structure is fitting. Moreover, this structure transports us into Nora’s mind and inner turmoil that often fails to be linear or find solutions.

Most of the time we are stuck in Nora's mind yet there are vignettes of setting that help make her anguished private telling, that would otherwise become repetitive and unpleasant, bearable. The book is written in a diary style, with a first-person point of view, focusing solely on Nora’s thoughts and we are so deeply entrenched in Nora’s inner turmoil until descriptions of the setting come, like a quick breath, after a long swim underwater. 

For example, Garner describes the city “start to shift and roar deeper, and the surface sounds of its life begin: doors banged, a radio gabbled, cars started up, a rooster somewhere crowed. I could tell the season was changing, because in daylight the air moved, moved ceaselessly, not what you would call a wind, but restlessness and unease which were delicious to the bones and skin.”

The auditory imagery is poetic and captivating, transporting readers to a vivid urban scene. We are offered a break from Nora's mind and are placed, definitively, in the Melbourne setting

Melbourne in the 1970s 

Similarly, there are many descriptions of nature such as the “cicadas [that] beat a rhythm that comes in waves, like fainting or your own heartbeat.” It seems almost odd to have these descriptions littered throughout a personal diary in which, you would assume, most people write about themselves and the actions of their day – the things that occupy their mind. Thus perhaps Garner is encouraging an honoring of the beauty of ordinary life and paying attention to the world around you.

Returning to the idea of repetitive inner turmoil, Nora, alongside almost all other characters, lacks character development. Nora is seemingly unchanged by her experience – an idea that is a cornerstone of our systems of punishment, psychology, and tradition of romantic fiction and education. Nora does not learn from any of her mistakes or try to change and this is the stem of the frustration I felt towards her.

Yet, this frustration shifted to sympathy as I recognized how the narrative structure mirrors a cycle of addiction. 

Javo is addicted to heroin and Nora is addicted to love, specifically Javo. Nora herself surmises “Smack habit, love habit – what’s the difference? They can both kill you.”

She “remembered only the good and lovable things about him, and not the wretchedness he caused [her], and the dope and the resentments and silences and the half-crazy outbursts.” Her view of him warped as she remembers the good, or the ‘high,’ but not the withdrawals or negative side effects.

Nora (Noni Hazlehurst) and Javo (Colin Friels) from the Movie adaptation 

Even falling in love with him was purely an accident as Nora finds she has “already plunged in, whilst at the time [she] thought [she was] only testing the water with [her] toe,” their intimacy “like an idle game that turned serious.” She did not intend to end up where she is, she was just testing the waters, trying the 'drug,' 'for fun' (we've all been there) but now she’s stuck deep in the addiction.

Read more deeply, perhaps Garner is also suggesting that ideology can be an addiction. That the patriarchal value system is so pervasive that it is difficult to recognize and so powerful that under the least pressure characters attempting liberation relapse readily

In Monkey Grip, the characters that form the counter-culture movement, and are trying to reinvent the value systems of gender roles and monogamy but ultimately fail. Whilst I recognise the elements of female liberation the book has its distinct limits.

For its time, it was incredibly significant that Garner was claiming a space in the world of literature for the domestic experience of young women. Moreover, whilst social conventions impose motherhood as the center of a woman’s life, Gracie’s absence from the story demonstrates that Nora finds her role as a mother to not be so significant to her identity and daily life.

But, from a contemporary perspective, in a more progressive society in terms of women’s liberation and, I would argue, quite an idealistic society, we take these feminist aspects as a given and rather tend to focus on where it falls short.

At the end of the day, the storyline is essentially about Nora’s obsession with a man. I’m not even sure it passes the Bechdel test (regular readers would know a lot about it but if you don’t – to pass, a story must have two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man).

Whilst there is a glimpse of Nora’s separation from Javo in her assertion that it is “not [her] job” to help Javo off dope, there is a motif that Nora 'relapses' and “feels like the mother,” to Javo and him the “sick child.” 

Similarly, the characters reject monogamy and rather sleep around as they see fit, yet, evidence of their jealousy is littered throughout the book as the characters feel a “flood of forbidden feelings.” Nora's friend, Angela, wants from Willy, the man she is sleeping with, “something he would not, could not give: something romantic, exclusive, complete.” 

A quick note: what I found particularly interesting is that Garner does not introduce characters, she refuses to provide explicit physical descriptions or any backstories for most characters. Names would float in and out of the book and I very quickly lost track of who was who and how they fit into the story. Yet there are characters like Angela – we don’t know what she looks like or frankly anything about her life, but we are privy to her deepest desire and insecurity and this is just another way in which the book is captivating.

In summary, the characters, and the counter-culture movement they represent, attempts to distance themselves from societal values on gender roles and monogamy yet these values are so entrenched that the characters relapse into desiring them. 

Display of a monkey grip 

This brings us to the title itself: Monkey Grip

Described as a grip in which “the harder you try to pull away the harder the grip,” the title suggests, that as Nora and Javo try to move away from their addictions they are sucked back in more violently. But more importantly, as we try to run from these social conventions, we end up holding on to them even stronger.

Thus, Monkey Grip is so much more than a diary of some old lady and is rather pertinent to us, as readers in 2023, and perhaps provides insight into the limits of our progressive social politics in a society founded on such persistent patriarchal value systems.

This is your sign to give Monkey Grip a (second) chance. 

That's all for this week

Xoxo, AR

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