CONDITIONS OF FAITH

The Australian Miller’s fifth novel but first to appear here: a well-intended but heavy-handed, plot-driven story of a 1920s woman trapped by motherhood.

Emily, a young Australian who impetuously marries much older Georges Elder, a half-Scot, half-French visiting engineer, wants more from life than hometown Melbourne can deliver. Her father wishes she’d continue her studies at Cambridge, in England, but Emily, finished with learning after taking her degree, thinks that marrying Georges, who is heading back to Paris, might be the solution. Georges, however, obsessed with submitting the winning design for a projected bridge in Sydney, doesn’t pay poor Emily enough attention once they’re back in Paris. She grows lonely and discontented, and, on a visit to her mother-in-law in Chartres, is ready for a barely credible seduction by the priest in charge of the bishop’s fruit in the crypt of the cathedral. Naturally, she finds herself pregnant and, naturally, instead of living the liberated life, feels sick and ugly. Another creaky plot turn brings her to Tunisia on vacation, where she meets a team of archeologists excavating the nearby ruins of Carthage and the prison cell of Perpetua, an early Christian martyr. Encouraged by the archeologists, Emily begins research Perpetua’s life. Back in Paris, determined to continue, she heads each day to the library, though pregnancy makes study difficult. Georges is not happy about her new preoccupation, but Emily is determined to persevere and is invited by the archeologists to work with them in Tunisia. First, though, she must give birth to a baby girl and confront the seducing priest, causing complications, though not for long: Emily soon makes the decisions necessary to a woman whose life must prove a point.

A novel of ideas that suffers from its own good intentions, manipulating a plot that ought to grow more naturally from them.