THE CHILDREN'S BACH

In late-1970s suburban Melbourne, a cluster of family and friends is disrupted by shifting allegiances.

This new edition of the short 1984 novel many consider the eminent Australian author's masterpiece has a foreword by Rumaan Alam in which he admits to having a hard time encapsulating its virtues. In the end, he cedes the mic to Garner herself, quoting from her diary: “The best I can do is to write books that are small but oblique enough to stick in people’s gullets so that they remember them.” This small, oblique, and gullet-sticking book circles around a group of nine people: Dexter and Athena Fox; their children, Billy, who has a developmental disability, and Arthur; Dexter’s long-ago ex Elizabeth, who in the wake of her mother’s death has been joined by her teenage sister, Vicki; Elizabeth’s sort-of boyfriend, a rocker named Philip; and Philip’s daughter, Poppy. In brief scenes, the perspective of the novel flits around the group from one shoulder to the next, often not making it immediately clear which characters are involved. This elusiveness inspires careful reading and works to closely focus attention on the key issue of how each character understands and misunderstands the others. For example: “Athena’s life was mysterious to Vicki. She seemed contained, without needs, never restless.” Young Vicki is going to be quite surprised when Athena’s needs and restlessness drive her to an action that affects everyone in the group. Garner gives a master class in her own technique with some advice musician Philip offers an aspiring songwriter: “Take out the clichés....Just leave in the images. Know what I mean? You have to steer a line between what you understand and what you don’t. Between cliché and the other thing. Make gaps. Don’t chew on it. Don’t explain everything. Leave holes. The music will do the rest.” There are continual references to music in this book, but it’s the music of the prose and the hyperlucid imagery that “do the rest” here. One small example—as Athena and Elizabeth’s friendship becomes ever more complicated due to shifting relationships with men, the two of them collaborate to fold a sheet coming off the clothesline, passing it by the corners, one relinquishing, one accepting, as “the light left the garden.”

Brilliantly constructed and puzzling in a good way, the way that even our own lives can be puzzling to us.