Helen Garner, in her short story collection, My Hard Heart, uses a wide variety of different narrative perspectives. Each type of narration is closely linked with, and special to, the story or experience being told. Susan Hosking, describes Garners writing style as an 'ability to refine subject matters that meaning emerges from accumulated detail rather than exhaustive explanation or description. 'The life of Art' is a story meant to tell of a life, of the length of a friendship and does so by appearing in disjointed little snippets of events that happen throughout that life, in first person and mostly beginning with "my friend." 'Postcards from Surfers' uses a normal conversational type of narration, with the story told in first person again, immediately centering the tale around the main character speaking and illumination the struggles of the protagonist. Their view of the people around them is shown by the replies made to questions or the type of conversation made by surrounding characters. Different again, is 'All Those Bloody Young Catholics." Brilliant use of narration here immediately sets the scene for the story and tells the reader about its characters, the constant ramble of words.
             In 'The life of Art' Helen Garner uses a narrator in the first person. This is a story told by a female protagonist about a friend of hers. It is a story of her relationship with this friend over the many years of their life, from high school to middle age. The narrator is restricted to what she perceives and experiences; however, she includes background knowledge about her friend, and informs the reader about the relationship with her friend. The short, disjointed paragraphs evoke this sense perfectly.
             'My friend cut lemons into chunks and dropped them in to water jug when we had no money for wine.'
             This gives the reader a sense of being snapshots of a life, tha...