Autumn Laing

by Alex Miller

Autumn Laing has long outlived the legendary circle of artists she cultivated in the 1930s. Now 'old and skeleton gaunt', she reflects on her tumultuous relationship with the abundantly talented Pat Donlon and the effect it had on her husband, on Pat's wife and the body of work which launched Pat's career. A brilliantly alive and insistently energetic story of love, loyalty and creativity.

Autumn Laing seduces Pat Donlon with her pearly thighs and her lust for life and art. In doing so she not only compromises the trusting love she has with her husband, Arthur, she also steals the future from Pat's young and beautiful wife, Edith, and their unborn child.
Fifty-three years later, cantankerous, engaging, unrestrainable 85-year-old Autumn is shocked to find within herself a powerful need for redemption. As she begins to tell her story, she writes, 'They are all dead and I am old and skeleton-gaunt. This is where it began...'
Written with compassion and intelligence, this energetic, funny and wise novel peels back the layers of storytelling and asks what truth has to do with it. Autumn Laing is an unflinchingly intimate portrait of a woman and her time - she is unforgettable.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Book Club, Literary Fiction, 21st Century, Historical, Historical Fiction

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Alex Miller is one of Australia's best-loved writers, and winner of the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2012.

Alex Miller is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, The Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game. His fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Awards. In 2011 he won this award a second time with his most recent novel Lovesong. Lovesong also won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award and the Age Fiction Prize for 2011. In 2007 Landscape of Farewell was published to wide critical acclaim and in 2008 won the Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award for Best Novel and the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. It was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the ALS Gold Medal and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Alex is published internationally and widely in translation. Autumn Laing is his tenth novel.

Reviews

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

John and Sunday Reed were wealthy patrons of the modern art movement in Victoria from the 1930s onwards. Their home, Heide, was in the semi-rural outskirts of Melbourne when they bought it in 1934, and is now a Museum of Modern art, almost in the inner suburbs.

As Miller himself wrote: this is a story ‘about the intimate lives of passionate, ambitious and gifted people …about their loves, their hates and their betrayals, but it is also a story about Australian art and culture and some of the questions they’ve had to confront and still do’.

The novel is based on Sunday Reed’s passionate affair with artist Sidney Nolan, during which Nolan lived with the Reeds for several years in a ménage a trois. Miller has changed the names of the characters and claims, disingenuously, I think, that ‘the inspiration for this story may have originated in the model of the relationship of Sidney Nolan and Sunday Reed, but Autumn Laing and Pat Donlon are my own fictional creations… anyone looking for the real Sunday Reed or Sidney Nolan will be looking in the wrong place and they will not find them’.

I’m left with deep reservations about the book, which centre on this very point. Increasingly I resist writers of ‘fiction’ who mine the lives of known, named people; keeping key elements of their stories but distorting them significantly.

At the end of Autumn Laing, I needed to read the excellent biography of John and Sunday Reed, 'Modern Love, to cleanse my mental palate. It’s a much better book than this.

Heide Website: https://www.heide.com.au/about/heide-...
Review: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2...

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know there are many readers who adore the writing style of this book, but unfortunately I am not one of them. The endless descriptions of irrelevant minutiae, punctuated by reminiscences of childhood that do nothing to advance plot or character, combined with interminable, repetitive, rambling, ungrammatical navel-gazing by some of the most boring characters ever to be committed to print made this almost impossible to read. It reminded me of the sort of work submitted by earnest but talentless students who have been told to include chunks of back story to develop character and lots of detail to create atmosphere, but have not read enough literature to have a feel for how to do it well. I found it difficult to get through even a single paragraph because I was so disconnected from the rhythms of the language and frustrated by the solipsistic musings accompanying every action, no matter how inconsequential. Things did improve very slightly as the characters went from merely tedious to actively annoying and some people did actually have sex, albeit offstage, before descending into self obsessive philosophising again.

Lots of people seem to love this book, though, so obviously I am just on the wrong wavelength to appreciate the quality of the writing.

[Sandy Hogarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy Autumn Laing as much as Journey to the Stone Country or Lovesong, perhaps because it was more city based with less of Miller’s lyrical prose giving us the outback and the Australian Desert. I am a strong fan of his writing.
I found the switching of time periods sometimes distracting.
Autumn Laing is married to her rather quiet and long suffering husband, Arthur, when she meets Pat Dolon and they become lovers. Pat’s wife, Edith is pregnant.
‘This is Autumn’s story:’ They are all dead and I am old and Skeleton-gaunt. This is where I began fifty-three years ago.’ Thus begins the novel.
She attempts to understand her marriage and most of all her short-lived affair with Pat Dolon. The love for him is with her to the end, and the need for redemption. Replete with wonderful insights into the world of painting and the ideas of the time.

[Annabel Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the 2nd Alex Miller novel I've tried and abandoned. I really disliked the narrative voice and didn't even make it to page 30.

[Bryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shelved did not finish.
Not my cup of tea. Reading reviews later confirmed many others did not find it an easy read.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book fictionalising the lives of artists? Well, yes, and no. Alex Miller’s latest novel, Autumn Laing is loosely based on Sunday Reed’s notorious affair with Sidney Nolan, but really, it has more in common with Matthias Politycki’s Next World Novella than other recent fictionalisations reviewed on my blog. (Visit the URL below for the link). Miller’s book is a reflection on life and a plea for redemption.

A page-turner it’s not. Very little actually happens as Autumn Laing looks back over her long life. Now suffering the indignities of old age (few of which Miller spares us, with the effects of cabbage as a running gag) she has caught a glimpse of Edith Black at the shops. Edith is Pat Donlan’s wife, and the woman Autumn wronged when she undertook her tempestuous affair with the artist. And yet, Autumn seems to beg, was it wrong to have made him what he was, the founding father of distinctive Australian modernism?

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/04/12/au...

[Renée Heaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this novel. Alex Miller is a poignant and insightful master of literary fiction. His ability to almost become his characters is demonstrated here beyond criticism. I was immersed in Autumn, throughout the entire story. I actually loved reading her as her older self. I wish I could explain why with some brilliant words, because I feel like I need to after reading such an excellent piece of writing. Put simply she gave me insight in to getting older, but I could also connect because I know what it's like to have a body that you have to struggle with everyday. Miller captures that struggle so clearly it makes one wonder what he knows that we don't. Many readers didn't like the detail, the reminiscing on every small thing, but I loved it. It gave this story texture. Not sure about the ending but what is an ending but a new beginning?

[Alken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. Autmn reminded me very strongly of an elderly artist I once knew. The book was a little slow and somewhat indulgent for the first half but progressed at a different pace in the second half. I loved Autumn; her personality and her life story. I loved the imagery (local Melburnian here!). Alex Miller is a wonderful author. His novels are each very different.

[Steve lovell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summer is supposedly the time for effortless reads in the sun, so perhaps it was somewhat perverse of me to tackle two of Alex Miller's tomes at this time of year – his mint new offering 'The Passage of Love' and one that had been hanging around on my shelves for a while, 'Autumn Laing' (2011). Miller is one of my favourites, up there with Winton. He is also a national literary treasure and I think 'Journey into Stone Country' and 'Coal Creek' are masterpieces. He won the Miles Franklin for the first title, as well as for 'Ancestor Game'.

As it turned out, 'The Passage of Love' was a breeze, a real effortless read of 500 plus pages that I loved returning to and got through in a flash. 'Autumn Laing' was a different matter.

The question to be asked is how much of Robert Croft, the first book's central character, is Alex Miller? From what I've perused, in terms of reviews, the author has conceded they are largely the same person, but not quite. So the offering is quasi-autobiographical I guess. There is some playing around of the time scale that Miller has admitted to. It covers a thirteen year period during Croft's life – his journey from the UK to jackarooing in the outback to his city factory work, a marriage and trying to make it as a writer. Miller's first wife Ann was a troubled soul as was Lena, Croft's wife, who was bookended by two other women in 'The Passage of Love'. Firstly, in Melbourne, there was Wendy, an older bed partner who had no time for love but plenty for sex with a sex-starved young fellow. After the anorexic Lena, at the end there came the person who was to be his rock, career wise and emotionally – Ann. Overriding these relationships was the one that drives him on in his obsession to be a writer of note, his friendship, during his formative years on a cattle station, with an Aboriginal stock-man.

Much of what happened in Croft's life is a mirror image of Miller's, including the close encounter with suicide and a rejection letter that cut both to the quick. How can writing be both very fine but unpublishable?

I keep very few books after I've read them, usually passing them on to friends or family; either that or donating them to the local community library. I ripped through 'The Passage of Love' in lightning time for me – and it's definitely a keeper.

But 'Autumn Laing' – oh dear, was that a struggle. Till well over the half way mark I wasn't enjoying it one little bit. But then something kicked in, I was away and started to actually relish it. But it took most of the month to get to that stage.

And it also took a while to twig that this was Miller's version of the artistic machinations of the Heide story, with his major characters being based on Sunday Reed, her husband and the artist Sidney Nolan. Taking place during one of the golden periods for Australian art, it's a tale that has fascinated me for years. And, in a link to 'The Passage of Love', it was a book of outback images, taken by the great artist unbeknown to Miller, that first enticed the writer to come to Australia.

Autumn (read Reed) is in her dotage, her body increasingly failing her, obsessed by her memories and memoirs, she recalls her affair with the mercurial Pat Donlan (Nolan). At that time the would-be artist was trying to convince himself and the world around him that it was possible to paint in an Australian way. He finds he is bashing his head against a brick wall in conservative Melbourne until it is recommended that he visits a supporter of young talent from outside the art establishment – Arthur Laing (John Reed). Through a series of events Pat eventually moves into the Laing's residence and commences his affair with the only too willing Autumn. The pair soon take off to the back country of Queensland where Nolan, sorry Donlan, finds his mojo and his art supplants his lover. Both Pat and Mrs Laing are not particularly appealing characters – I was more drawn to the ever-patient Arthur who was prepared to wait out his wife's infidelity until the artist leaves them both for fame and fortune.

I'm pleased I read 'The Passage of Love' first. Had I commenced with the older book the latest may still be sitting on my shelf this time next year. 'Autumn Laing' is not a keeper, but I am hoping the eighty year old Miller can continue his semi-autobiography with a sequel, as well as delivering other titles. Long may Alex Miller be around.

[Daniel Tynan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit too rambly and romantic for me...

[Belinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most famous and awarded literary writers yet, for some reason, I’d never read any of his work. When, after reading yet another glowing review of his most recent novel Autumn Laing I saw that very same book on display at the library, I figured the universe was telling me it was time to fill this literary hole of knowledge so I picked up the book and took it home with me.

The eponymous Autumn Laing is loosely based on Sunday Reed who, with her husband John, ran a kind of artists community at what is now the Heide Art Gallery. Sunday Reed had an affair with Sidney Nolan, the famous Australian painter (and apparently is rumoured to have painted parts of his work). In Autumn Laing, Autumn is at the end of her life, reflecting on her two great loves, the talented artist Pat Donlan (Sidney Nolan) and the somewhat bland Arthur Laing.

I am deeply torn on my opinion of this book. If I were do a pros and cons list, each column would have the exact same amount of items in it. The language was lovely and the book was very well written. BUT it did seem to take a long time to get anywhere. Some of the paragraphs were over two pages long and occasionally I found myself skimming rather than reading every word. The female characters in this book are written exceptionally well, in fact better than the male characters, which surprised me given that the book is written by a man. In particular, the essence of 80-plus-year-old Autumn Laing is captured spectacularly (although, honestly, I could have done with a little less talk about farting). BUT the character of Autumn Laing reminded me a lot of my own grandmother, with (unfortunately) her tendency to tell really really long and rambling stories with little temporal or internal consistency. The descriptions of Australia and Melbourne were very vivid BUT omigod the foreshadowing was ridiculously excessive. From about the second page we are told repeatedly that something happened in the Australian outback but the ‘something happened’ doesn’t actually happen until 30 pages before the end and, by that stage, I just really wanted it to happen so I wouldn’t have to read the dire foreshadowing anymore! One positive for the book that doesn’t have a negative balancing item is the exploration of the restrictions placed on the women in this book due to their gender. If Sunday Reed had been born in a different time, she would have lived a very different life.

I did enjoy this book. It definitely inspired me to read more about Sunday Reed and the Heide artist colony – I do feel I have a special connection with the gallery since I lost a baby shoe there. It was also a real pleasure to read a literary novel that didn’t contain a scene about a privileged white man masturbating! But I am reluctant to recommend it as it is a very long book which, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it’s a long book that feels like a long book, if that makes any sort of sense! Reading this book took effort and required work and, if you like your books effortless and enrapturing, Autumn Laing is not for you. Also, this book has a lot of characters who commit suicide in it, which may be a trigger for some.

A solid literary effort that might have benefitted from an editor who was good with a red pen. Three stars.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

A 2.5 star review. I nearly liked it.

A truly awful main character, made more interesting in her grouchy 80's than she was in her scheming selfish 30's has an affair with an ambitious but thus far untested artist 10 years her junior. Both married, he to a lovely young woman who has just informed him he's to become a daddy, she to a "good man", a soulmate, a steady sort with whom she has boring sex irregularly but she has a good life with him, including cultivating a circle of artsy folk who come to their property just outside Melbourne, Old Farm it's called, to talk art and get into fights and drink obsessively.

Our main gal, Autumn is her name, is a piece of work. She's thoughtless, self-obsessed to the point of diagnosable narcissism, and utterly insensitive to the feelings of anyone but herself. Borderline sociopathic, along with that obvious narcissism. Horrible person. There is so little to redeem her, it makes reading tough going to stick with her throughout the novel.

Her lover, Pat Donlon, is equally self-obsessed but in a blank kind of way. He is at art school but hates it, and rails against being taught anything lest it spoil his artistic instincts. Yep. Only a 21 year old completely unskilled, unqualified male keen to become Australia's "greatest artist" but with no actual body of work behind him could come up with that. And it's only when he pays a call on a wealthy newspaperman and sees "real" art in the foyer does he come face to face with what he's up against - possibly he has no artistic talent whatsoever. This road to Damascus moment in the newspaper lobby is almost ridiculous - Pat has truly never witnessed real art before this? He's an art student, right?

Anyway. Onward we lumber. Into an affair between Autumn and Pat. A more unlikely pairing you would be hard pressed to find. There is no description of their attraction, they openly dislike and mistrust one another, he's a scrawny runt (shorter than her, he comes across as being a high-voiced jockey type with very little physical appeal), and she's a scrawny praying mantis type, tall and gangly with no shape to her. Where their sexual tension (to the point of near madness in Autumn's case) came from, and is sustained from, remains a mystery.

And the set up to their sexual affair is equally strange. Autumn becomes verbally abuse, saying she hates him at the very first meal they have (at Autumn and husband Arthur's kitchen table), and then she spills her wine in his general direction (in lieu of throwing it in his face) - more strange but isolated behaviour. Why is she doing this? We have no sense she's attracted to him at this stage, she just starts telling him she hates him and ruining her good tablecloth, behaviour out of no place. Then at the wacky "picnic" at the home Pat shares with his lovely pregnant wife Edith, Autumn and he are on the beach alone, in the rain, and she hits him in the face for saying something she doesn't like. Huh? Is this meant to stand in for some good writing that describes a build up of sexual tension between two otherwise mismatched individuals? Whatever it is, it just makes Autumn seem more certifiable and less attractive, and her affair with Pat even more unlikely.

The first, oh, two-thirds of the book also contain lots of back story and I suppose "context setting", which is dreary. Those chunks of text aren't ever really tied into the characters during the main part of the action (the late 1930s), so we are left to play amateur psychiatrist to see what impact those early experiences, and those places, are supposed to have had on our people. Chunks of text, disconnected. Yes. Anyone know a good editor?

And then there's Melbourne, and the Central Queensland outback (which is denied, in another disconnected chunk of text disguised as a conversation between Autumn and her cattle station host Margaret). It could have been anywhere. Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Moresby... there was little to connect us to Melbourne except the word "tram" and mention of certain suburbs. There was no sense of place. As for Central Queensland (a place I know well, having spent 20 years of my early life there), it, too, could be anyplace. It's like the surface of Mars out there, in places, and yet the description of it is so benign. Yes, we hear it's hot once or twice, and there are frogs in the shower, but it's nor in anyway brought to life as an interesting (and as it turns out for Pat and his art career, important) place.

And then there's the time. This was 1938, one year before WWII was declared, and yet no sense of that impending world cataclysm, except a sentence here or there from the narrator's point of view. Was this meant to imply that our artsy Aussies had no interest in world affairs? Or just another writing oversight?

Then there's the partners of these two. Arthur, Autumn's husband, is a bright and good man, and yet he kind of disappears during the main part of their affair (when Pat is actually living in his house, having sex with his wife all over the place while he's at work as a Melbourne lawyer). We have no sense of Arthur during all of that tumultuous time. He doesn't know they're having an affair? He doesn't care? He hopes it will run its course and Autumn will regain her sense? WHAT? And what happened after the affair? We know Autumn falls to pieces, crying all day in her bed and refusing to plant roses in the garden and make Arthur his dinner... but what about Arthur? Is he watching this insane behaviour and thinking..... what? Arthur just kind of fades to black during these key parts of the story. A shame, as he was such a likeable character.

And Edith. Once Autumn starts to ignore and dismiss her (which she does from minute one, after she meets Pat), she kind of disappears too. We never hear about the baby she's carrying when Pat meets Autumn, but only later in the story we can patch together it was a girl. She doesn't just fade to black, she gets wiped off the board entirely.

And then there's the artsy circle of friends, some of which has potential. They could have been much more interestingly portrayed, but they came off in tones of grey or were brought to life in patches, leaving us wondering (and in some cases, wanting more).

Oh, it was a all a little clumsy and disconnected. We were meant to dislike our main gal Autumn (she told us so herself, as the curmudgeonly 80-something year old intent on her memoirs but also reluctant at the same time), but also to kind of fall in love with her as some kind of bohemian pied piper, a role she never fully lived up to or seemed to fit her especially well.

A book of promise, not fully realised. Had a few interesting moments, but lots of disappointments.

[The Bookshop Umina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Miller is one of my favourite Australian authors and I am thrilled that he will be coming to the Central Coast to attend a dinner event for us when this book is launched in October.

This book is full of Miller's humour. Autumn Laing is a feisty old lady now, but was once a Sunday Reed style figure, influential with young artists and caught between her husband and an inspiring, talented young painter who was recreating the face of Australian art. I loved Autumn's crankiness and bluntness and the way she manipulated the nurse, her doctor, and the writer who had come to see her, full of visions of using all the old diaries and art works that were cluttering up the house to write her book.

Miller creates vivid scenes and unforgettable characters who remain with you long after the novel has concluded. Autumn Laing is full of Australian landscapes, the art scene of the 1920s and 30s and a very cranky narrator - one that I so enjoyed but would not want to nurse! Autumn is not a character that will be liked by many, her infidelity and sharp tongue will see to that, but we do not need to like her to appreciate this masterful novel that has one of the strongest narratorial voices that I have read.

I can't wait to hear Alex talk about Autumn Laing in person in October. He spoke about her at the Leading Edge conference in March, before the book was ready for publication, and I was eagerly awaiting my proof copy - it was well worth the wait :)

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is an outstanding example of the power of fiction to explore the possible inner lives of real people. Here, the imagined characters of Autumn and Arthur Laing and Pat Donlon (among others) reflect on real people, art patrons Sunday and John Reid (the Heide Circle) and Australian modernist artist Sidney Nolan. It is a fascinating setting as it embodies not only the inner turmoil of artistic expression, but also the drama of the artistic movements of the times, the rise of Modernism and the breaking away from European-led styles of painting that dominated in Australia up to the 1930s. The first-person narrative of Autumn Laing in her late years, imagining the lives of these extraordinary people through her own personal emotional struggles is totally engaging. What is it like to live in the skin of an artist? What is it like to love an artist for whom art is the only real love? There is wonderful insight here into how love, loyalty, friendship, jealousy and despair wreck havoc on individuals while at the same time impact on major Australian cultural developments. In an epilogue, the author explains that as the viewpoint is from the inside out, only fiction is able to explore the emotional ‘history’ that biography and non-fiction can only suggest. It is a wonderful achievement and a rich and rewarding reading experience.

[Rob Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life as the mistress of an artist can surely be no bed of roses. The complexity of divided loyalties added to the volatility of the artistic temperament - muse, lover, model, doormat, life support?

Autumn Laing was no Sylvia Plath, no brilliant mind clashing catastrophically with one equally brilliant and equally unstable. This is a book foremost about what it feels like to be a woman desperately in love and then jilted.

Autumn Laing was clearly a remarkable woman and this book, a distillation of her memoires, deserves to be written. Some compensation for her emotional investment, the sacrifice of her marriage, the trauma of her loss? Or maybe some atonement for the hurt she caused to her husband and the artist's wife? Either way it is at least another step toward restoring the lives of the invisible women who helped build our male-dominated societies.

In criticism, there is very little to explain the thoughts in the mind of Pat Donlon, a remarkable artist and there is only a shallow description of the Australian Outback, the country that so inspired him. The book is not about Pat.

[Catherine Abbott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not quite sure what this book was trying to say. If it was a meant to be a book about a art movement in Austalia- it did not get the point across. I found it strange reading a book set just before world war 2 when there was absolutley no mention of it. Maybe that was the way it was in the Australian rich and famous - no regard for politics just art. There were parts I enjoyed reading, the stories and voices of the other characters, but I found the voice and thoughts of Autumn irritating and I did not feel I really got a sense of her at all! Also was confused if Pat was such a great Australian artist why did he end up spending his life in the UK- some explanation of this would have been good!. Also why did all the artists want or commit suicide- is the point that those that paint lead miserable unfufilling lives that make them suicidial- or was the auhor making someother point about suicide and old age! I don't think i will be recommending this book to anyone or rushing to read another Alex Miller book.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex Miller drew on the brief love affair between Sunday Reid and the painter Sid Nolan for this exploration of the development of modern art in Australia in the 50's. Autumn is retelling the story of her life at Old Farm with her husband Arthur and Pat, who becomes her lover, and their circle of other painters and intellectuals who frequented the farm, which is loosely based on Heide. As she nears death, she needs to cleanse her soul and record the events which caused the break up of Pat's marriage to his pregnant wife, Edith, and lead to the painting of a seminal series of work about the outback.

A great novel, which deserves to win the Miles Franklin for 2012, against a strong field. This one will be hard to beat.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book that evokes many emotions and brings to life a Melbourne of the past. Alex Miller's ability to write from the perspective of a female character and to do it so well, is reminiscent of Ian McEwan. You feel immersed in the lives of Autumn,Edith, Pat and Arthur.
You feel for them and what they experience and although you may not always like them, you cannot resist them. Even the minor characters in this book stay with you.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Alex Miller book and I enjoyed it - nearing the end of her days, Autum Laing peels back the layers of her memories to tell her sad story of compromising passion for safety.

[Jennifer Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Miller has written a fictional autobiography, in the name of Autumn Laing, with his interpretation of the life of another woman, Sunday Reid, and her relationship with the artist Sidney Nolan.In the notes by the author he explains this purpose, as his way of making sense of the events that occured in Heidelberg, Melbourne, and underpin the story of the emergence of Nolan as one of Australia's foremost painters.
The inner monologue that Autumn shares with us at an advanced age where she is contemplating her own death is beautifully written, full of savagery for people and sometimes for herself.
She documents the background of Pat Conlan, a young man of poor background with big dreams of being an artist or at least famous. His wife Edith was also an artist having met Pat at the Gallery school in Melbourne, and was pregnant with their first child.
The intersection of the childless Autumn and her wealthy husband Arthur who support the arts, and Pat has life changing consequences for all, including Edith, as Autumn develops an intense intellectual and sexual relationship with Pat without concern for social propriety or the feelings of others. What follows is a period where Arthur supports Pat and offers him a home and seems to ignore Autumn's obvious behaviour.
Pat responds to her in a similarly intense manner, and offers to live with her if she will leave her husband but she refuses, but not before they have a 6 week period where she lives with him in a remote property in Queensland as he produces an amazing flow of creative painting that is the foundation of his career.
The inner monologue is a rich but sometimes terrible account of a life that was sometimes lived without concern for others, that hurt people who loved her, but also possibly served as a creative spark for a genius.
It is also a deeply personal and thoughtful view on ageing, written by a creative soul who reflects issues of love and loss, so beautifully with clarity
Highly recommended

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really struggled to rate this book, which is why I have taken so long to review it. It certainly is not my favourite of Miller's novels. I was looking forward to reading it because it is a fictionalised account of Sunday Reed and Sydney Nolan, so the premise of the story is engaging and it is well written. I found the main protagonist, Autumn Laing's, recounting of her life rather melodramatic; this may simply be because she is presented as a highly-strung character and may simply be a literary technique used to express her character. Nonetheless, I found it a little offputting. I also struggle with novels that explain everything about characters in the novel, which is what Laing's character does in the tellling of her life. Again, perhaps this is just an expression of Laing's character, but another feature of the book I found offputting. Also, none of the characters in the novel were particularly likeable, except, perhaps Pat Donlon's wife and, again, I struggle to enjoy a book where I don't like any of the characters in the story.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Another book I'd had on my shelf for years, entranced every time I picked it up while dusting, by its cover.

An elderly Autumn tells the story of an affair that she had with a man in her and her husband’s group of friends. These things are always entered into so selfishly, with little regard to the consequences, both short and long-term. The fact that it would happen, though, was evident from nearly the beginning, but Autumn kept us waiting far too long and I expected something much more spectacular by the time she finally got the story out.

All in all, not really a very spectacular book.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I am not the target audience for this book. I am thoroughly sick of books about artists. It seems like there are 100 books about artists for every book about librarians or engineers. This seems the opposite to the real world prevalence of these careers.

The reason I think authors like writing about artists is because they think bohemian chic justifies a level of bad behaviour. The characters in this novel are all basically unlikeable and narcissistic.

The writing style involves a huge volume of irrelevant detail and loopy, long sentenced style. The author needs an editor who will give them a book on plain English and tell them to reduce the length by half.

[Charelle Nievaart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll keep this review short and sweet. This book was frustratingly long winded. Was rather hard to finish. I found none of the characters particularly likeable. One could have easily cut out the first five chapters and had no impact on the overall outcome. When the plot finally got around to going somewhere, it was engaging enough, I suppose. Would I recommend it? Not really.

[Lisa the Tech · Rating 3 out of 5]

A begrudging 3.5 out of 5. It was at the halfway mark where I began to lose interest in Autumn's story. Thankfully it had a triumph of a finish but boy howdy; what a pathetically dull slog to get there. I was ready to slap this book with a well-deserved 1 out of 5. I yearned for a climax but it never materialized. The ending on a better book would have given it 5 out of 5.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this hard work. I love Alex Miller's writing, but this really felt forced, with no sympathetic characters at all

[Lee Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read from one of my favourite authors. Cannot wait to recommend it to my book club.

[VinitaF · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book tedious and banal. Tried too hard to be good writing but just does not make the mark

[Diane Tait · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - found it pretty boring until I skipped ahead and read that although fictional, it was based on Sidney Nolan and Sunday Reed. That was almost enough to make me keep on reading but I didn’t.

[Manatee · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnf
insufferable people