I'm trying to write about footy and my grandson and me. About boys at dusk. A little life-hymn. A poem. A record of a season we spend together before he turns into a man and I die.

It's footy season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson's under-16s team. She not only goes to every game (give or take), but to every training session too, shivering on the sidelines at dusk, fascinated by the spectacle.

She's a passionate Western Bulldogs fan with an imperfect grasp of the rules, who loves the epic theatre of AFL football. But her devotion to the under-16s offers her something else. This is her chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him before he rushes headlong into manhood. To witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for his team as it fights for a place in the finals.

With her sharp eye, generous wit and warm humour, Garner documents this pivotal moment, both as part of the story and as silent witness. The Season is an unexpected and exuberant book: a celebration of the nobility, grace and grit of team spirit, a reflection on the nature of masculinity, and a tribute to the game's power to thrill us.

"Garner is working in epic mode in The Season as she examines familiar themes and preoccupations: masculinity and its codes, the pleasures and contradictions of social groups, what it means to bear witness . . . Garner has always been an extraordinary stylist and in The Season her prose, athletic, soars and dances, just like those young footballers" - Guardian

"The Season is marked by Garner's unsparing eye for detail and that superpower of detachment - a narrator who sees everything yet who is also deeply involved in the story, with emotional flourishes that rise when she watches her grandson" - Age

"Startling in its candour and compelling in its nakedness . . . a marvellous paean to the glories of youth just shy of the treacheries of manhood" - Australian

"Her perfect prose and sharp observations are a joy" - Sydney Morning Herald

"Garner's prose is as luminous as ever" - Australian Book Review

"The sentences are precise and they sing. Garner turns from philosophical reverie on mortality, or violence, or masculine shame, to capturing the looseness and love with which a family talks footy . . . It's a book of gentle pleasures and deep meanings . . . As ever, when you put a Helen Garner book down and look up at the world again, you do so with newly sharpened eyes" - Monthly

"Is there anything more thrilling than reading Helen Garner on everyday things such as haircuts, the Melbourne skyline, ageing, AFL tactics, friendship and half-time oranges? A book for all seasons - not just the footy one!" - Gleaner