The Children's Bach

The Children's Bach (for the longest time I vaguely thought that 'Bach' might refer to a NZ beach shack. But it doesn't.) is a short and exquisitely formed novel, only 160 pages of quite big print, and it was met with great acclaim when it was first published in 1984 (my edition is branded as a Modern Classic). I got great pleasure from recognising the Melbourne setting: Merri Creek, St Georges Rd, Melville Rd, the Fitzroy pool (again).

Having said that, I could see how an impatient reader or someone who likes a clear plot might feel frustrated with this novel. We are presented with an outwardly almost perfect family, and then witness how they crack and buckle under the influence of Dexter's old friend, Elizabeth, her much younger sister Vicki and Elizabeth's musician lover, Philip (musician -- there's your first red flag, ladies). Almost nothing is explicitly stated, almost everything is implied. As Philip advises a young songwriter, 'Don't explain everything. Leave holes. The music will do the rest.'

I think if Garner were writing this novel today, forty years later, she might reconsider the way she writes about Dexter and Athena's child Billy, who seems to be neurodivergent; and she might (or then again, she might not!) reconsider a sexual encounter between a forty year man and a seventeen year old girl, however insouciant the seventeen year old might seem the morning after.

I'm coming to the conclusion that Garner is more of a natural observer than an inventor, but I might talk more about that later.