Helen Garner was a pioneering chronicler of motherhood

In 1972 Helen Garner lost her job as a teacher. She had led a frank discussion about sex with her young students and written an anonymous piece about it for a countercultural magazine, entitled “Why does the women have all the pain, Miss?” She was subsequently identified as the author, and the education department in the Australian state of Victoria did not take kindly to her freewheeling, expletive-laden pedagogical approach. Being sacked was the best thing that ever happened to her, Ms Garner later said, as “it forced me to start writing for a living.”