The Children's Bach - Helen Garner (1984)

 

Rating: Excellent

This is my second read of Helen Garner’s novella, The Children’s Bach, the first time was as part of the Modern Australian Literature unit I completed at university in the mid-nineties. I enjoyed it greatly at the time and on my second read I’ve enjoyed it even more. When I first read it, I was actually, in hindsight, a novice reader when it came to Australian literary fiction, and literary fiction in general. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of a certain kind of literary storytelling, serious, yet playful, told simply, but with mysterious literary mechanisms lurking underneath it all. I was intrigued and impressed by the tale of the Fox family, the married couple Athena and Dexter and their sons, Arthur and Billy, who are living out their lives in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. The novella stayed with me for decades, often coming to mind when I visited Melbourne. The Fox family’s lives are altered by the appearance of Elizabeth, an old university friend of Dexter’s and her much younger sister, Vicki. Both end up being drawn to the Fox’s house, an old run-down weatherboard (my internal image of the house anyway), with cramped rooms and a large disheveled back yard. This then brings the cock-sure rock musician, Philip, who is loosely involved with Elizabeth, into their lives, who provides just the louche distraction Athena needs to break free of the restrictions of domestic life.

Helen Garner, in the inner suburbs

Set in the early eighties, The Children’s Bach is culturally fascinating, both in terms of Garner’s portrayal of inner city Australia and her singular writing style. Garner presents as an Australian writer developing our own literary landscape, particularly when taking into consideration her breakout debut Monkey Grip (1977), which mined a similar, but darker urban milieu. Garner’s style is impressionistic, with characters appearing abruptly and scenes flowing into each other. The novel will perhaps not make sense to readers expecting a linear notion of time and setting (something this critic had a great deal of trouble with, so much so it made me think that he has a limited understanding of narrative), however it’s not that radical, rather it comes across as a more modest and pared back emulation of Patrick White’s high modernistic stylings. The novel is thematically rich, exploring family values vs. the nonconformity of counterculture lifestyles, sexuality and the yearning disaffection of middle-age, mostly played out through Athena’s lust for what lays outside of her established life with the loving, yet overbearing Dexter and their disabled son Billy (who presents as autistic). Of course, music runs all through the novella, with Athena’s attempts at learning to play Bach on a rickety piano a metaphor for attempting to master living one’s life in the face of a complex world. The Children’s Bach is a beautiful, rewarding reading experience and underlines that Helen Garner is rightly celebrated as a talented and important Australian writer who appears as both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, somewhat like the characters she created for The Children’s Bach.