This is the second volume of Helen Garner’s Diaries to be published and covers the years 1987–1995. The Helen in these entries is more mature, more established, and perhaps not as happy. Professionally, things are going well. She’s working on her first film script, writing for different magazines and journals, trying film criticism, being invited to overseas festivals, and serving on the selection panel for the Literature Board. Her burgeoning reputation comes with its little perks; when she orders a new hot water service, it arrives the next day. The dispatcher is a fan.

In her private life there are flashes of happiness but an underlying sadness. She has embarked on a relationship with V, another writer, but V is married, and she snatches time and affection where she can. Eventually they marry, but when she tells her parents that she’s getting married again, they don’t react. There is, too, a yearning for some more stability for someone whose life has been so peripatetic; she buys her first house and a block of land in the bush.

She writes about her writing, about other writers – Elizabeth Jolley, Alice Munro, George Steiner, Proust, and Chekhov. At times she takes pleasure in her work, but then qualifies it. There is a growing sense of confidence and we see the move from fiction to nonfiction as she starts work on her landmark book, The First Stone. One Day I’ll Remember This is a delightful book, longing to be dipped in and out of, and, through it, the reader gets a picture of this remarkable woman.

Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings.