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A Brief Affair
A moving novel about storytelling, about truths, and love, from twice Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller.
From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story.
On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all - a loving family and a fine career - until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own.
Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals.
Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller's work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms.
From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story.
On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all - a loving family and a fine career - until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own.
Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals.
Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller's work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms.
261 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2022
58 people are currently reading
574 people want to read
About the author
Alex Miller
126 books7 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For other authors of this name, see:
see: Alex Miller - Australian Fiction
see: Alex Miller - Astrology
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For other authors of this name, see:
see: Alex Miller - Australian Fiction
see: Alex Miller - Astrology
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
June 14, 2023
Well written and of course the prose wonderful, and not a word wasted. This is the type of book I read but don't devour or resonate with. Literary fiction and I seem to share a complicit relationship, and on the other hand, I see why others love it. Love the genre, and love this book.
This book was full of wonderful writing, the words flowed and had many clever and intricate layers. Smart observations between women of different generations, with much to separate them in life experience, but then so much joining them in sameness as well.
Frances Egan, an academic, a delusioned one at that, experiences a one night affair with her 'Mongolian lover' whilst on a work trip abroad. This changes her life forever. I did not enjoy the constant internal meanderings on this. It was too much. She thought about it incessantly, and I'm not sure how the man thought. The book was not meant to show his side.
Hating her job, the partriarchy of a university she works hard for, we hear much of this disalusionment. It was depressing, she was depressed. It made me depressed. Her workplace was a former assylum; she got her hands on the diaries of a former inmate and thus began a relationship between these women. One in her 40's, the other in her 80's. They bond and have much in common about the meaning and tradjectorie of their unusually intertwined lives.
Frances' family loved her, they were good people but they did notice the change in her after the trip and affair.
It was a rambling story which I did not form an attachment to, one of those that I'm just not sure what the meaning was meant to be. Others will catch it, I did not.
With my thanks to Allen & Unwin for my advanced proof copy which provided the basis of this review.
This book was full of wonderful writing, the words flowed and had many clever and intricate layers. Smart observations between women of different generations, with much to separate them in life experience, but then so much joining them in sameness as well.
Frances Egan, an academic, a delusioned one at that, experiences a one night affair with her 'Mongolian lover' whilst on a work trip abroad. This changes her life forever. I did not enjoy the constant internal meanderings on this. It was too much. She thought about it incessantly, and I'm not sure how the man thought. The book was not meant to show his side.
Hating her job, the partriarchy of a university she works hard for, we hear much of this disalusionment. It was depressing, she was depressed. It made me depressed. Her workplace was a former assylum; she got her hands on the diaries of a former inmate and thus began a relationship between these women. One in her 40's, the other in her 80's. They bond and have much in common about the meaning and tradjectorie of their unusually intertwined lives.
Frances' family loved her, they were good people but they did notice the change in her after the trip and affair.
It was a rambling story which I did not form an attachment to, one of those that I'm just not sure what the meaning was meant to be. Others will catch it, I did not.
With my thanks to Allen & Unwin for my advanced proof copy which provided the basis of this review.
November 9, 2022
When Joseph gave Dr Fran Egan the old diary which he'd found at the back of a cupboard in Cell 16, which was where Fran's office was, she had no idea this wonderful little book would change her life. She, her husband Tom, their teenage daughter Margie and little Tommy, all lived on a farm near Castlemaine in Victoria. Fran commuted each day into her place of work, a place she'd devoted her working life to, but after a nineteen day visit to China for work, then the pressures of the job, Fran's direction changed and it was the little diary which paved the way.
Valerie Sommers was the owner of the diary, living in the "mad house", which was now office buildings. Fran had no idea if Valerie was still alive - she suspected she wasn't from the little she'd read - but she was drawn to Tunisia when the family went on an overseas holiday. Work, life, a family's love - was there more to it all?
A Brief Affair by Aussie author Alex Miller was an intriguing and poignant story which centred around Fran and her family, then the people who became her extended family. Beautifully written, the indepth look at Fran and her encounter with a special person in China, her continuing life as a successful career woman, then the "straw that broke the camel's back", made A Brief Affair a book to recommend.
With thanks to Allen & Unwin for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
Valerie Sommers was the owner of the diary, living in the "mad house", which was now office buildings. Fran had no idea if Valerie was still alive - she suspected she wasn't from the little she'd read - but she was drawn to Tunisia when the family went on an overseas holiday. Work, life, a family's love - was there more to it all?
"Life, Frances, it's such a brief affair."
A Brief Affair by Aussie author Alex Miller was an intriguing and poignant story which centred around Fran and her family, then the people who became her extended family. Beautifully written, the indepth look at Fran and her encounter with a special person in China, her continuing life as a successful career woman, then the "straw that broke the camel's back", made A Brief Affair a book to recommend.
With thanks to Allen & Unwin for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
April 5, 2023
Dr Fran Egan heads a business school at a Melbourne university in a new campus in the suburbs. The building used to be a psychiatric hospital and Fran’s office used to be cell 16. On a trip to China for a conference she has a one night stand (the brief affair of the title?) that appears to be such a perfect moment for her (she is herself, not mother, not wife, not boss or teacher) that she becomes aware of all the illusions of her dream to be a professor and in her family relationships.
I’m a bit surprised how much I enjoyed this novel. It’s beautifully written and while Fran is the main subject there are a range of characters that provide a lot of the meaning in the story. Joseph the uni caretaker also worked there when it was an asylum and gives Fran a journal written by the woman, Valerie who occupied cell16. Joseph’s wife Eleni was also a patient. Fran’s family, husband Tom, teenage daughter Margie and son, Tommy are also important particularly Tommy who is a quiet and thoughtful boy who is good friends with Ina an old woman who owns the property on the ridge next to the family farm.
Mental health, life balance, family relationships, workplace dynamics and education are all themes. Modern universities and their need to get fee paying students particularly from overseas rather than focus on the quality of the education they’re providing stood out for me.
An excellent read.
I’m a bit surprised how much I enjoyed this novel. It’s beautifully written and while Fran is the main subject there are a range of characters that provide a lot of the meaning in the story. Joseph the uni caretaker also worked there when it was an asylum and gives Fran a journal written by the woman, Valerie who occupied cell16. Joseph’s wife Eleni was also a patient. Fran’s family, husband Tom, teenage daughter Margie and son, Tommy are also important particularly Tommy who is a quiet and thoughtful boy who is good friends with Ina an old woman who owns the property on the ridge next to the family farm.
Mental health, life balance, family relationships, workplace dynamics and education are all themes. Modern universities and their need to get fee paying students particularly from overseas rather than focus on the quality of the education they’re providing stood out for me.
An excellent read.
December 15, 2022
I have long admired the writing of twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Alex Miller. This was no exception. It is beautifully written. Lovely setting in this book that starts in China before moving to Australia and a Victorian farm. Then an interesting portrayal of the old asylum building with its cells. Believable, interesting characters even if in some ways I couldn’t relate to Dr Francis Egan, the main character. Fran appears to have it all. She is working towards a professorship, has a loving husband in Tom and two great kids, Margie and Tommy. But she feels something is missing. Or it was until China. Though well written, I felt much of her reasoning about what happened in China was trying to justify and quantify excuse her actions about the brief affair. In the end you can try and dress it up no matter how you like but it is still a betrayal of her marriage.
When Fran is given, by Joseph, the caretaker, a long forgotten diary of one of the inmates Fran becomes intrigued the the diarist Valerie and the story revealed.
Some lovely secondary characters portrayed. One of these is Joseph, and his care for his beloved wife Eleni. Another is Fran’s husband Tom. There are others.
This is a story about love in various forms. It is a leisurely character study and I very much enjoyed it, as a I expected I would, despite some things that rankled a little and one thing that wasn’t clarified given what appeared to be hints dropped earlier. But they are minor quibbles in what is a sensitively written book.
My thanks go to Allen & Unwin my ARC which I won to read and review. So pleased to have read this perceptive and thought provoking novel.
When Fran is given, by Joseph, the caretaker, a long forgotten diary of one of the inmates Fran becomes intrigued the the diarist Valerie and the story revealed.
Some lovely secondary characters portrayed. One of these is Joseph, and his care for his beloved wife Eleni. Another is Fran’s husband Tom. There are others.
This is a story about love in various forms. It is a leisurely character study and I very much enjoyed it, as a I expected I would, despite some things that rankled a little and one thing that wasn’t clarified given what appeared to be hints dropped earlier. But they are minor quibbles in what is a sensitively written book.
My thanks go to Allen & Unwin my ARC which I won to read and review. So pleased to have read this perceptive and thought provoking novel.
November 29, 2022
Dr Frances Egan, a 42 year old academic, travels to China as the Dean’s emissary to an International Management Conference to sell executive residential short courses. Avoiding the tourist minibus, she instead catches local transport and encounters an exotically seductive man with a bewitching smile. In a hotel room in Hefei Fran leaves her known world behind – wife, mother, professional woman, with Professor Jargal Batu, for a moment. Forever. The simple peace of her old contentment is shattered.
Her husband and two children notice the change, but do not know her secret.
The Sunbury campus of Fran’s educational institution is based at Castlemaine, Victoria. The site of an old lunatic asylum built in the 1870s, ’a time of stone and silence and heaviness ... a time of men and religion and their terrible categories of right and wrong’. Little wonder Fran experiences unease, even a presence, in her office, formerly Cell 16. On a dark and stormy night, having missed her train home, she is invited by Joseph the caretaker to his cottage for tea. Joseph has strong links to the asylum: his mother an involuntary inmate, his wife a former patient, and him raised by the gardener and his wife. But he has a bounty to share with Fran; the journal of the last patient to occupy Fran’s office.
Daughter of the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Valerie Sommers had been incarcerated from 1957 until the asylum’s closure. Her diary had been concealed behind the cell cupboard to avoid confiscation by the authorities. Valerie had been expelled from a prestigious boarding school due to a scandal, shipped off to live with an aunt in England, and whilst in Caloola had experienced a forbidden and tragic love.
Valerie’s diary resonates with Fran, it’s a consolation belonging to the same world as her night in Hefei, and her experience of bullying men. Fran’s life becomes enriched by Joseph and Valerie, but she learns that finding yourself doesn’t mean losing everything else.
It’s quite daunting to review a book by an author who has been lauded by Emeritus Professors and twice won the Miles Franklin Literary Award but Alex Miller provides us with a thoughtful, accessible, gracious and thought provoking exploration of love.
Thanks to Allen & Unwin for an advanced reading copy.
Her husband and two children notice the change, but do not know her secret.
The Sunbury campus of Fran’s educational institution is based at Castlemaine, Victoria. The site of an old lunatic asylum built in the 1870s, ’a time of stone and silence and heaviness ... a time of men and religion and their terrible categories of right and wrong’. Little wonder Fran experiences unease, even a presence, in her office, formerly Cell 16. On a dark and stormy night, having missed her train home, she is invited by Joseph the caretaker to his cottage for tea. Joseph has strong links to the asylum: his mother an involuntary inmate, his wife a former patient, and him raised by the gardener and his wife. But he has a bounty to share with Fran; the journal of the last patient to occupy Fran’s office.
Daughter of the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Valerie Sommers had been incarcerated from 1957 until the asylum’s closure. Her diary had been concealed behind the cell cupboard to avoid confiscation by the authorities. Valerie had been expelled from a prestigious boarding school due to a scandal, shipped off to live with an aunt in England, and whilst in Caloola had experienced a forbidden and tragic love.
Valerie’s diary resonates with Fran, it’s a consolation belonging to the same world as her night in Hefei, and her experience of bullying men. Fran’s life becomes enriched by Joseph and Valerie, but she learns that finding yourself doesn’t mean losing everything else.
It’s quite daunting to review a book by an author who has been lauded by Emeritus Professors and twice won the Miles Franklin Literary Award but Alex Miller provides us with a thoughtful, accessible, gracious and thought provoking exploration of love.
Thanks to Allen & Unwin for an advanced reading copy.
December 24, 2023
This was a solid 3-star in the beginning, as the professionally excellent but unfulfilled 40+ yr old female in a male academic business world was obsessing about a fling in another country with a local handsome ‘warrior’.
So ridiculously idealised - and it was starting to really annoy me how she was hyper sexualising this ‘perfect’ encounter like a 20 yr old. But I’m a librarian who personally finds it hard to let a book ‘go’. (Even tho I tell everyone else to!)
All whilst letting 2 of her over-the-top misogynistic co-workers bully her relentlessly. Trope.
But then we moved to her showing a maturity, eventually, of understanding that life is brief. So brief. Relationships are everything. And our kids may ‘take’ relentlessly, but they give back unknowingly every day. (Love my boys)
Miller has bravely taken on a female lead, with women’s social and personal baggage. I won’t say he nailed it - but it was a bloody good go.
So ridiculously idealised - and it was starting to really annoy me how she was hyper sexualising this ‘perfect’ encounter like a 20 yr old. But I’m a librarian who personally finds it hard to let a book ‘go’. (Even tho I tell everyone else to!)
All whilst letting 2 of her over-the-top misogynistic co-workers bully her relentlessly. Trope.
But then we moved to her showing a maturity, eventually, of understanding that life is brief. So brief. Relationships are everything. And our kids may ‘take’ relentlessly, but they give back unknowingly every day. (Love my boys)
Miller has bravely taken on a female lead, with women’s social and personal baggage. I won’t say he nailed it - but it was a bloody good go.
April 3, 2023
- thanks to @allenandunwin for my #gifted copy
Alex Miller is an award-winning Australian author I have wanted to read for a very long time, so when I had a chance to request A Brief Affair to read and review, I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity. The novel's premise sounded very intriguing, so I can safely say that I went into it with gusto.
Unfortunately, this story did not resonate with me at all.
I could not, for the life of me, marry the main storylines of this novel. On the one hand, Frances Egan, the protagonist, struggles with coming to terms with a one-night affair she had that could possibly ruin her marriage. The affair makes her re-evaluate her whole life, including her long-term professional career. On the other hand, Frances finds a long-forgotten diary of an asylum woman, and she attempts to discover more about the woman's life at the asylum and afterwards.
I'm still yet to uncover how these two very different storylines relate to each other.
In hindsight, I think this is definitely a 'me' problem. I have no doubt I missed the whole point of this novel because I couldn't find the 'tender love story' and the 'sensitivity and compassion' that the blurb promised... but we all know blurbs can be very tricky. I genuinely did not find anything tender, loving or thought-provoking in France's story. The depth I'm sure is there escaped me completely.
To summarise: I did not get it. Pretty much nothing in this book made sense to me because, plot-wise, nothing happens. I did not appreciate being stuck in the never-ending stream of consciousness where the protagonist explores how the affair she willingly took part in affects her life so much as I could not relate to her nor empathise with her drastic decisions. And this comment is not coming from judgement, more so because her reasonings did not make sense to me.
Overall, A Brief Affair was not my cup of tea: a plotless novel, a bit on the bland side for me, which I did not enjoy much. Given my experience with this book, I am unsure about reading another Alex Miller novel.
Alex Miller is an award-winning Australian author I have wanted to read for a very long time, so when I had a chance to request A Brief Affair to read and review, I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity. The novel's premise sounded very intriguing, so I can safely say that I went into it with gusto.
Unfortunately, this story did not resonate with me at all.
I could not, for the life of me, marry the main storylines of this novel. On the one hand, Frances Egan, the protagonist, struggles with coming to terms with a one-night affair she had that could possibly ruin her marriage. The affair makes her re-evaluate her whole life, including her long-term professional career. On the other hand, Frances finds a long-forgotten diary of an asylum woman, and she attempts to discover more about the woman's life at the asylum and afterwards.
I'm still yet to uncover how these two very different storylines relate to each other.
In hindsight, I think this is definitely a 'me' problem. I have no doubt I missed the whole point of this novel because I couldn't find the 'tender love story' and the 'sensitivity and compassion' that the blurb promised... but we all know blurbs can be very tricky. I genuinely did not find anything tender, loving or thought-provoking in France's story. The depth I'm sure is there escaped me completely.
To summarise: I did not get it. Pretty much nothing in this book made sense to me because, plot-wise, nothing happens. I did not appreciate being stuck in the never-ending stream of consciousness where the protagonist explores how the affair she willingly took part in affects her life so much as I could not relate to her nor empathise with her drastic decisions. And this comment is not coming from judgement, more so because her reasonings did not make sense to me.
Overall, A Brief Affair was not my cup of tea: a plotless novel, a bit on the bland side for me, which I did not enjoy much. Given my experience with this book, I am unsure about reading another Alex Miller novel.
December 27, 2022
Alex Miller is a new to me author but he has twice won the Miles Franklin award here in Australia so I was eager to read his latest book A Brief Affair.
Sadly this book was not really for me. I just couldn't find the meaning in the story. The affair of the title (which in reality is a one night thing) takes up so much space in protagonist’s Frances' head I found it hard to fathom. She doesn't confess to her family and yet it somehow kicks her into changing her life? Her abrupt resignation I found bizarre. Walking out on her boss seemed a huge over reaction. I feel like I missed something here?
The blurb spins this as a tender love story but I didn't get this at all. She had an affair! She loses herself in her imagination and doesn't discuss major life decisions with her husband! Where was the love there? And as for the finding of the former mental instruction patient’s diary and the subsequent impact this has on Frances? Well I just found this whole element strange.
I kept waiting for something to properly happen but it just felt like a rambling muddle of vague storylines with not a lot of a point to them. The writing was not bad at all but I don't think it does what it says on the box. Argh I hate it when a book feels like this for me as I feel sure I must have missed the point!
Thank you to @allenandunwin for my #gifted copy. A Brief Affair is out now and I'm sure this is going to be loved by others. Just a shame it didn't quite work for me.
Sadly this book was not really for me. I just couldn't find the meaning in the story. The affair of the title (which in reality is a one night thing) takes up so much space in protagonist’s Frances' head I found it hard to fathom. She doesn't confess to her family and yet it somehow kicks her into changing her life? Her abrupt resignation I found bizarre. Walking out on her boss seemed a huge over reaction. I feel like I missed something here?
The blurb spins this as a tender love story but I didn't get this at all. She had an affair! She loses herself in her imagination and doesn't discuss major life decisions with her husband! Where was the love there? And as for the finding of the former mental instruction patient’s diary and the subsequent impact this has on Frances? Well I just found this whole element strange.
I kept waiting for something to properly happen but it just felt like a rambling muddle of vague storylines with not a lot of a point to them. The writing was not bad at all but I don't think it does what it says on the box. Argh I hate it when a book feels like this for me as I feel sure I must have missed the point!
Thank you to @allenandunwin for my #gifted copy. A Brief Affair is out now and I'm sure this is going to be loved by others. Just a shame it didn't quite work for me.
June 17, 2023
Alex Miller is a well known Australian author however, this is my first time reading anything by him. The story centres around Dr Fran Egan, a 42 year old university professor. Fran's job has been relocated from the Melbourne campus to a new regional campus. Fran discovers that the new campus was a former asylum and that her new office was cell 16. Fran finds and old journal in her office which belonged to a former patient and this impacts her life greatly. I enjoyed parts of this story however, I didn't particularly like Fran. Thanks to Allen & Unwin for my ARC. 3.5 Stars.
January 4, 2023
Having not read any books by Alex Miller I was excited by this book and the blurb sounded interesting and like something I wanted to read. Unfortunately it hasn't hit the mark for me.
The story confused me and it didn't seem to go anywhere for me other than just on and on. I do like the concept of the book but it didn't live up to the blurb. Nothing ever really happened in this story, it was like a narrative of the main character but without much substance.
And on a final note I must say I skipped through it and in the end I just couldn't finish it as it was annoying me.
A Brief Affair
Alex Miller
Allen & Unwin Australia Pty. Ltd.
The story confused me and it didn't seem to go anywhere for me other than just on and on. I do like the concept of the book but it didn't live up to the blurb. Nothing ever really happened in this story, it was like a narrative of the main character but without much substance.
And on a final note I must say I skipped through it and in the end I just couldn't finish it as it was annoying me.
A Brief Affair
Alex Miller
Allen & Unwin Australia Pty. Ltd.
March 23, 2023
I have really enjoyed some of Alex Miller’s previous novels but this was definitely not one for me. At 50 pages in I nearly gave up but continued because it is not overly long (and I’m a completionist).
Unfortunately I found the characters and dialogue unconvincing and the plot (particularly the character connections) seemed very unbelievable. I also found the language a bit cloying and/or saccharine and and some of the similes and metaphors were just strange.
The idea of the missing journal appealed to me but I was not invested in Fran’s story at all. There were just too many loose threads and it all seemed to unravel into a fairly predictable blasé ending. It might make a successful Hollywood movie.
Unfortunately I found the characters and dialogue unconvincing and the plot (particularly the character connections) seemed very unbelievable. I also found the language a bit cloying and/or saccharine and and some of the similes and metaphors were just strange.
The idea of the missing journal appealed to me but I was not invested in Fran’s story at all. There were just too many loose threads and it all seemed to unravel into a fairly predictable blasé ending. It might make a successful Hollywood movie.
November 12, 2022
After seeing Alex Miller talk about his books I’ve finally read one. Being a Central Vic local it’s lovely to read and know where everything is, you can see the characters in those around us. I’m looking forward to reading more of his extensive back catalog.
November 21, 2022
"She is meeting herself for the first time and it is like meeting a stranger."
Of all of the beautiful lines in this book that is my favorite, because we have all been there but we have been unable to express it.
This book is moving on so many levels it is hard to know where to start. Yes it is about love and truth but it is also about finding and staying true to yourself. The only trick is knowing which self to look after the one we keep to ourselves or the one we present to the world - and can they be one and the same
This book will make you question what you think and in some cases hold dear. A beautifully written story that is purely character driven.
Many thanks to Allen and Unwin for the chance to read the wonderful story.
Of all of the beautiful lines in this book that is my favorite, because we have all been there but we have been unable to express it.
This book is moving on so many levels it is hard to know where to start. Yes it is about love and truth but it is also about finding and staying true to yourself. The only trick is knowing which self to look after the one we keep to ourselves or the one we present to the world - and can they be one and the same
This book will make you question what you think and in some cases hold dear. A beautifully written story that is purely character driven.
Many thanks to Allen and Unwin for the chance to read the wonderful story.
January 28, 2023
Australian author Alex Miller is a master of fiction, matching characters with landscapes, capturing scenes with a simplicity and elegance that allow the narrative to flow. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, thirty years ago with The Ancestor Game and twenty year ago with Journey to the Stone Country, Miller continues to please with every new novel.
Miller’s last two books have strayed into biography with Max in 2020, and autobiography with the hauntingly lyrical The Passage of Love in 2017. In this latest offering his fictional first-person narrator is female, allowing him yet another point of view. A Brief Affair describes the awakening passions of Dr Fran Egan. A career academic, she has been driven towards achieving her goals of becoming a professor and furthering educational standards for her students. But more and more that career has been about grants, funding and administration and less about the teaching. She is the head of a new business school which has taken over an old Victorian building that once housed an asylum. Many academics don’t want to travel to this out of Melbourne location. They prefer the urban life, the cafés and buzz of the city, and visit the new campus only to deliver their lectures.
Things change for Fran when she undertakes a business trip to China, seeking new investment and students. She has an intense romantic encounter with a Chinese academic. A night of passion where few words are exchanged, but the intensity of emotion is everything:
For Fran it is a secret she will always withhold from her husband and family, something just her own. They, however, notice the change in her ‘after China’. Something is different.
Fran considers telling her husband Tom about what happened in China, but knows how destructive that would be:
Alongside the dilemmas in her personal life, Fran’s career is being stretched to the limit. Her one salvation from all this is Joseph, the old gardener and handyman who has worked in the building since he was a boy. Joseph gifts Fran an old diary which he found behind the antique shelving in her office when it was being renovated. It is a diary of a former inmate of the asylum, Valerie, and talks of her love for another woman. The poetry and the sentiments touch Fran deeply and she attempts to find out more about the life of this remarkable young women. Miller introduces this story subtly and allows its importance to grow within the lives of Fran’s whole family. The diary serves both as inspiration to Fran and escape from the issues that confront her.
Miller is a master of drawing characters whom he always places in a landscape that is both real and which wraps around them to become an essential part of their story. Use of weather, seasons, plants and birds subtly collide to bring the narrative alive.
Miller’s last two books have strayed into biography with Max in 2020, and autobiography with the hauntingly lyrical The Passage of Love in 2017. In this latest offering his fictional first-person narrator is female, allowing him yet another point of view. A Brief Affair describes the awakening passions of Dr Fran Egan. A career academic, she has been driven towards achieving her goals of becoming a professor and furthering educational standards for her students. But more and more that career has been about grants, funding and administration and less about the teaching. She is the head of a new business school which has taken over an old Victorian building that once housed an asylum. Many academics don’t want to travel to this out of Melbourne location. They prefer the urban life, the cafés and buzz of the city, and visit the new campus only to deliver their lectures.
Things change for Fran when she undertakes a business trip to China, seeking new investment and students. She has an intense romantic encounter with a Chinese academic. A night of passion where few words are exchanged, but the intensity of emotion is everything:
It wasn’t an affair, that sordid word. She was not a woman who had betrayed her husband with another man. She would refuse to name it that. It was simple and it was pure, unsullied and unknown, a mystery to such things as moral choice. Its source a place beyond the reach of social artifice and hostility. No one would ever understand it except the two of them. No one but they would ever know it. She felt no remorse. She knew in her heart she had done nothing wrong but had done something beautiful and real.
For Fran it is a secret she will always withhold from her husband and family, something just her own. They, however, notice the change in her ‘after China’. Something is different.
He was ten and here was his mother lying to him, and he knew his mother was lying to him, and he didn’t know how to sort things out with her. It was no good her excusing herself by saying children don’t understand. Children do understand. Children sense things at once. They understand everything. Children understand truth more clearly than grown-ups. They have highly tuned antennae and resister the smallest changes in the mood of the family. Their thoughts are not cluttered with ambitions. Children fear the death of their parents. They may not know exactly what’s going on, but they know something is going on.
Fran considers telling her husband Tom about what happened in China, but knows how destructive that would be:
Lying in bed later, wide awake beside Tom, she returned to their conversation and to her memory. If Jargal Bati had said to her that night in the hotel room in Hefei, This is love, isn’t it? she would have replied, Yes, that is what this is. How to tell Tom that? She understood it. She believed it. But how to justify such things to someone else, even to someone you loved, as she loved Tom? There was a limit. That night in Hefei she was not the mother her children knew. They would not have known her. And if she were to bring it all out and lay it before Tom, he would get tangled up in the net of it. They both would. What a mess it would be. A bomb would go off and blow them apart. Blow them to bits. Body parts. The plain truth would become something untrue. Truth was too much. That was the trouble. We can’t have the truth. Who can live with it? The facts are too bitter. We’re better off without it, without them. Things are possible without the truth. With it, nothing would ever hold together for long. Especially not marriage. Once it gets into your head, truth is a carnivore lodged in the brain. It eats its way into everything. How would you ever get it out again once it had made its fatal entry into you? You would be eaten up by it day and night. We live by the myth, not by the truth. Our lovely, private, cosy, reassuring myths. Our hopeless dreams.
Alongside the dilemmas in her personal life, Fran’s career is being stretched to the limit. Her one salvation from all this is Joseph, the old gardener and handyman who has worked in the building since he was a boy. Joseph gifts Fran an old diary which he found behind the antique shelving in her office when it was being renovated. It is a diary of a former inmate of the asylum, Valerie, and talks of her love for another woman. The poetry and the sentiments touch Fran deeply and she attempts to find out more about the life of this remarkable young women. Miller introduces this story subtly and allows its importance to grow within the lives of Fran’s whole family. The diary serves both as inspiration to Fran and escape from the issues that confront her.
Miller is a master of drawing characters whom he always places in a landscape that is both real and which wraps around them to become an essential part of their story. Use of weather, seasons, plants and birds subtly collide to bring the narrative alive.
October 6, 2023
The story tells of a woman having a mid-life crisis, including a one-night stand and her disillusionment with her career. The incomplete sentences and other, overly-long sentences, were annoying. On the other hand, the character development was good. I found Tom, Fran's husband and Tommy, their youngest son, very real and likeable. Overall - it was boring and unengaging.
February 15, 2025
An absolute joy to read in every sense. I don't want to analyse the book or to comment other than to say I loved the structure the language, the characters, the themes - in fact I loved everything about it. At least 6* !
December 8, 2022
A new book from Alex Miller is always an event on a booklover's calendar. Awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012 for his body of work, which now comprises 13 novels, a memoir, essays and short stories, Miller has won multiple awards. His third novel
The Ancestor Game
(1992) won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Miles Franklin Award — which he won for the second time with
Journey to the Stone Country
(2002). He's also won the Christina Stead Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards twice...for
Conditions of Faith
(2000) and Lovesong (2009, see my review).
My favourites of his mid-career novels are Landscape of Farewell,(2007) and Coal Creek (2013). All his works explore the stories of others to engage his readers' empathy — sometimes the simple working folk of rural and remote Australia — and sometimes sophisticates from academia. What gives these contrasting milieu authenticity is that Miller has a foot in both these camps. Born in England, he began his working life as a farm labourer, and after migrating alone to Australian when he was sixteen, he worked as a horse-breaker and a ringer, while he studied for university entrance. And then, in complete contrast to this rugged outdoor life, he taught creative writing at tertiary level for many years.
A Brief Affair is set northwest of Melbourne where academic Dr Frances Egan takes the train each day from her family's farm near Newstead, to work at a university campus that used to be the old Sunbury Asylum. Architecturally splendid, the building is heritage-listed, but still retains its original gloominess, which you can see here in the video, where the footage is accompanied by some suitably atmospheric music.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6of...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/12/08/a...
My favourites of his mid-career novels are Landscape of Farewell,(2007) and Coal Creek (2013). All his works explore the stories of others to engage his readers' empathy — sometimes the simple working folk of rural and remote Australia — and sometimes sophisticates from academia. What gives these contrasting milieu authenticity is that Miller has a foot in both these camps. Born in England, he began his working life as a farm labourer, and after migrating alone to Australian when he was sixteen, he worked as a horse-breaker and a ringer, while he studied for university entrance. And then, in complete contrast to this rugged outdoor life, he taught creative writing at tertiary level for many years.
A Brief Affair is set northwest of Melbourne where academic Dr Frances Egan takes the train each day from her family's farm near Newstead, to work at a university campus that used to be the old Sunbury Asylum. Architecturally splendid, the building is heritage-listed, but still retains its original gloominess, which you can see here in the video, where the footage is accompanied by some suitably atmospheric music.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6of...
The sound of the heavy outer door crashing to behind her echoed through the void of the building. There was a faintly familiar smell of something chill and undisturbed in the air of the wide foyer. From where did she remember this smell? A residue of something from the past that refused to leave the fabric of this place, the ghosts of the once-upon-a-time lunatics refusing to be forgotten. There was no one about. She crossed the foyer and climbed the broad stone stairs to the upper floor. Her runners made a faint squeaky sound in the empty building. In the beginning, when she had worn heels to work, thinking herself then a kind of goddess, emboldened by her sense of her own success, her heels had struck the desolate silence of the old Welsh slate into life, walking sympathetic murmurs, murmurs of disquiet that belonged to an era of long ago. The past. She would put her heels on once she was in her office. Her runners would go into her satchel for later. With runners on her feet no one heard her approaching. It was no wonder they called them sneakers. (p.28)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/12/08/a...
November 20, 2022
Dr Frances Egan, or Fran, is someone important in the world. She’s the head of a faculty in a regional university in Australia. She has a family, and a husband who thinks the work of her. She is privileged. And one single night, on a trip to China for work, she meets a man and her life is changed. That one night with the man in China changes so much more for Fran. Her one-night affair brings her out of her inward focused schlump to realise a new perspective on life, and what is most important, and how much she can contribute back to others.
This is a book about transition, about shift in thoughts, an evolution of belief in what matters. Fran begins to realise that love and belonging and commitment are so much more meaningful and profound in the relationships and parts of her life that she has taken for granted. This is coupled with an investigation she embarks on when she is given an old journal from a patient who once lived in her office when the building was once a ‘mental hospital’ years gap. Valerie was full of life and vigour, and through her journal entries, Fran finds a connection to Valerie, and a need to channel her energy and perspective on life, and work out whatever happened to Valerie. Valerie became the rehabilitation Fran needed to change her approach to her career, her family and her life.
For a very short book, it is full of richness of narrative. The coldness of the campus, the sterility of the university campus, to the openness and freshness of the bush, I was immersed in the environment at each moment. I think this was also a reflection of Frans’s changing mind state, opening up as the cloud of self-absorption lifted. The connection to the old caretaker, Joseph was also quite beautiful, and the storyline about Fran and Joseph’s lives coming together was very tender sand sweet. I read this book in one sitting. I implore you to do the same.
“Facts are not the only truth. Our own private truth is elusive and hides from us.”
This is a book about transition, about shift in thoughts, an evolution of belief in what matters. Fran begins to realise that love and belonging and commitment are so much more meaningful and profound in the relationships and parts of her life that she has taken for granted. This is coupled with an investigation she embarks on when she is given an old journal from a patient who once lived in her office when the building was once a ‘mental hospital’ years gap. Valerie was full of life and vigour, and through her journal entries, Fran finds a connection to Valerie, and a need to channel her energy and perspective on life, and work out whatever happened to Valerie. Valerie became the rehabilitation Fran needed to change her approach to her career, her family and her life.
For a very short book, it is full of richness of narrative. The coldness of the campus, the sterility of the university campus, to the openness and freshness of the bush, I was immersed in the environment at each moment. I think this was also a reflection of Frans’s changing mind state, opening up as the cloud of self-absorption lifted. The connection to the old caretaker, Joseph was also quite beautiful, and the storyline about Fran and Joseph’s lives coming together was very tender sand sweet. I read this book in one sitting. I implore you to do the same.
“Facts are not the only truth. Our own private truth is elusive and hides from us.”
April 17, 2025
What impressed me most in Miller’s latest novel was his intimate exploration of his central character, Dr. Fran Egan. A seemingly fulfilled woman, both personally and professionally, after a sexual encounter in China (a “brief, perfect affair”) Fran searched for a new dimension that belonged totally to her, outside of her roles as a wife, mother, and career woman. Miller portrayed his female protagonist with such sensitivity and, above all, a credibility that could have convinced me that the author himself was female. Her thoughts, her behaviour, and her motivations were skilfully handled by a writer whom I have long admired.
Miller examined the aspects of Fran’s life that she began to see with a new perspective, one that would allow her to move from what was expected of her to grasp at new challenges and, hopefully, provide her with the need she sought for change. Most influential was her discovery of a diary that had been left in the former “lunatic asylum”, now the new university campus of which she was Head of School. It had belonged to a patient whose long history at the asylum revealed trauma and would impact strongly on Fran as she read through its contents.
The reading of the diary initiated life changes both for Fran and its author, creating an engaging and compassionate narrative about life, love, and fulfilment.
Miller examined the aspects of Fran’s life that she began to see with a new perspective, one that would allow her to move from what was expected of her to grasp at new challenges and, hopefully, provide her with the need she sought for change. Most influential was her discovery of a diary that had been left in the former “lunatic asylum”, now the new university campus of which she was Head of School. It had belonged to a patient whose long history at the asylum revealed trauma and would impact strongly on Fran as she read through its contents.
The reading of the diary initiated life changes both for Fran and its author, creating an engaging and compassionate narrative about life, love, and fulfilment.
November 20, 2022
"It takes time and love for the garden of memory to compose its stories." - Alex Miller
Miller's dream-like, poetic quality of his storytelling draws you into a perfectly examined internal life. The story is woven against the backdrop of a farm and lived lives that are uniquely Australian - there are honestly few authors who can take you there.
And I melted when Tunisia made an appearance. There were echoes of Emily Stanton and I felt this longing desire to enter this world that just doesn't exist. This book is an absolute highlight of 2022.
Miller's dream-like, poetic quality of his storytelling draws you into a perfectly examined internal life. The story is woven against the backdrop of a farm and lived lives that are uniquely Australian - there are honestly few authors who can take you there.
And I melted when Tunisia made an appearance. There were echoes of Emily Stanton and I felt this longing desire to enter this world that just doesn't exist. This book is an absolute highlight of 2022.
November 15, 2022
Another beautiful thoughtful and thought provoking novel by a master. So many times I would stop, reread the sentence and think about what I just read, how does he do that, write about your own personal thoughts! All characters were real, living real lives and loving, listening, learning from themselves, those around them and from the past.
December 15, 2022
Dr Frances Egan has a one-night stand - a beautiful and loving one night affair that changes her life. The affair changes her very being and thought pattern about who she is as a person. A beautifully written story that captures your heart and mind as you stay glued to the pages. Alex Miller has put together a wonderful novel worthy of five-stars.
October 26, 2022
In the opening chapter, Fran, a professor of management working in the old building in Sunbury (Victoria, Australia) that was once an insane asylum, writes a diary entry about the vague sense of unease she feels in her office, which she ascribes to the awful things that once took place there.
The next chapter introduces us to something that happened on her recent work trip to China. She chances to meet a man who sits next to her on a public bus. They have an immediate and unexpected, inexplicable yet intense connection. He is Chinese, and in fact turns out to be a fellow academic, though she imagines he has the look of “a Mongolian warrior”.
Amazingly, he has visited Bendigo in Australia, and has even lunched near her hometown at a pub which she knows well, with people whom she also knows.
They go to bed together at her hotel. Their connection - for that one night - is intense, beautiful in her eyes, and - it changes her forever, in ways she finds hard to describe. They are both married, are both parents, and they do not exchange details or make any arrangements to stay in touch. She is fine to not know any more about him beyond the intense feeling of joy she had with him. (She knows his name, but isn’t even sure which part of it is his family name). It has simply been one momentous moment, and she holds it as a precious secret that is for herself only.
This connection really resonated with me. I have on occasion had that sense of an odd and indescribable yet very real “connection” with some people, whether acknowledged or not, and whether ascribable to “kismet”, “past lives”, pheromones, or what, I don’t know. Occasionally I “just know” we have something yet undiscovered in common, or that we are going to be friends… or - ?!
We meet Fran’s family - steady, loving husband Tom, young teenage daughter Margie, and young son “Little Tommy”. They live on a farm they bought for their “tree-change” move from Melbourne. It’s Tom’s dream to be a carpenter craftsman, to make beautiful wooden things the old-fashioned way. Margie is a fairly typical teen girl and also a Daddy’s girl, closer to Tom than to Fran. Little Tommy is an oddly quiet boy who loves writing stories in his room, and who has forged an unusual friendship with an elderly woman who lives nearby. Fran learns from Margie that the family noticed that “things are different” since Fran returned from China, though they can’t explain just how.
At the school of management offices in the former asylum, Fran has a variety of colleagues and acquaintances. Some resented the move to Sunbury from the Melbourne office, and only turn up when required. One man gives her the creeps - he’s basically a sexist sleaze. Some of the other women are quite distant with her, as if distrustful. Only Sanjeev prefers being out there, due to his personal private businesses - and perhaps his being less included in the middle-class whiteness of Melbourne.
Then there is Joseph, the caretaker of the place. He’s a man in his 60s whose housing (for himself & his ill wife) is dependent on the university. Fran feels more at home with him than with many others on her staff. He tells her tales of the former asylum-dwellers, and she learns that both his mother and mother-in-law were among them. He also gives her a notebook - a diary, really - which he found when renovations were being made, in the room that her office now occupies.
The diary was written by a young woman named Valerie, an inmate. Fran’s office was once her cell. She had an intense love affair with another woman inmate, Jessie, and when it was discovered, it came to a tragic end. It is so beautifully written, and Valerie’s thoughts, insights and emotions are so evocatively expressed, that Fran begins to feel it is another secret thing that is meant for her and her alone, and that she is gaining something very strong and personal from it. There comes a time when she unexpectedly has to relinquish it, and her initial reluctance, and I think a bit of possessiveness about it, was also a feeling I empathised with…
The connection she has with Joseph continues and strengthens in unexpected ways, as her family eventually takes him in. In a way, he saves her, and she later more literally saves him.
The only odd thing in the book was the way the characters sometimes talk to each other, in deep philosophical conversations much the time. It struck me as, if not stilted, then quite unusual. I wonder if there are people who really converse like that?
The next chapter introduces us to something that happened on her recent work trip to China. She chances to meet a man who sits next to her on a public bus. They have an immediate and unexpected, inexplicable yet intense connection. He is Chinese, and in fact turns out to be a fellow academic, though she imagines he has the look of “a Mongolian warrior”.
Amazingly, he has visited Bendigo in Australia, and has even lunched near her hometown at a pub which she knows well, with people whom she also knows.
They go to bed together at her hotel. Their connection - for that one night - is intense, beautiful in her eyes, and - it changes her forever, in ways she finds hard to describe. They are both married, are both parents, and they do not exchange details or make any arrangements to stay in touch. She is fine to not know any more about him beyond the intense feeling of joy she had with him. (She knows his name, but isn’t even sure which part of it is his family name). It has simply been one momentous moment, and she holds it as a precious secret that is for herself only.
This connection really resonated with me. I have on occasion had that sense of an odd and indescribable yet very real “connection” with some people, whether acknowledged or not, and whether ascribable to “kismet”, “past lives”, pheromones, or what, I don’t know. Occasionally I “just know” we have something yet undiscovered in common, or that we are going to be friends… or - ?!
We meet Fran’s family - steady, loving husband Tom, young teenage daughter Margie, and young son “Little Tommy”. They live on a farm they bought for their “tree-change” move from Melbourne. It’s Tom’s dream to be a carpenter craftsman, to make beautiful wooden things the old-fashioned way. Margie is a fairly typical teen girl and also a Daddy’s girl, closer to Tom than to Fran. Little Tommy is an oddly quiet boy who loves writing stories in his room, and who has forged an unusual friendship with an elderly woman who lives nearby. Fran learns from Margie that the family noticed that “things are different” since Fran returned from China, though they can’t explain just how.
At the school of management offices in the former asylum, Fran has a variety of colleagues and acquaintances. Some resented the move to Sunbury from the Melbourne office, and only turn up when required. One man gives her the creeps - he’s basically a sexist sleaze. Some of the other women are quite distant with her, as if distrustful. Only Sanjeev prefers being out there, due to his personal private businesses - and perhaps his being less included in the middle-class whiteness of Melbourne.
Then there is Joseph, the caretaker of the place. He’s a man in his 60s whose housing (for himself & his ill wife) is dependent on the university. Fran feels more at home with him than with many others on her staff. He tells her tales of the former asylum-dwellers, and she learns that both his mother and mother-in-law were among them. He also gives her a notebook - a diary, really - which he found when renovations were being made, in the room that her office now occupies.
The diary was written by a young woman named Valerie, an inmate. Fran’s office was once her cell. She had an intense love affair with another woman inmate, Jessie, and when it was discovered, it came to a tragic end. It is so beautifully written, and Valerie’s thoughts, insights and emotions are so evocatively expressed, that Fran begins to feel it is another secret thing that is meant for her and her alone, and that she is gaining something very strong and personal from it. There comes a time when she unexpectedly has to relinquish it, and her initial reluctance, and I think a bit of possessiveness about it, was also a feeling I empathised with…
The connection she has with Joseph continues and strengthens in unexpected ways, as her family eventually takes him in. In a way, he saves her, and she later more literally saves him.
The only odd thing in the book was the way the characters sometimes talk to each other, in deep philosophical conversations much the time. It struck me as, if not stilted, then quite unusual. I wonder if there are people who really converse like that?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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January 1, 2024I ended 2023 with a whole range of books that I picked up and put down after a chapter or two because i just wasn't feeling it. For some reason I stuck it out with this one. At least until the 69% mark. I really should have included this one in the ones I put down early on because I couldn't really tell you one thing that I liked about it. I didn't connect with any of the characters, and I couldn't understand the relevance of 'the brief affair' which is only mentioned sporadically and with no real significance. Why did these two cheat? I'm completely at a loss because I just didn't buy that they had a connection of any sort. Maybe it was just me, and maybe if I had continued right until the end everything would have come together and made complete sense, but I just couldn't force myself to do it. Anyway, there's no denying that the author writes well, unfortunately this story just wasn't for me.
December 30, 2022
I do enjoy Alex Miller’s writing. To me, it is a comfortable venture into rich words and stories. A Brief Affair is concerned with love and how your direction can change through chance meetings. I particularly thought the chance finding of Valerie’s diary gave the tale another layer which added depth to the story.
January 1, 2024
the tender writing style really allows you to mediate on love, be it in its furtive or unabashed forms. unfortunately though, i just felt like this lacked a bit of structure and was jumping all over the place at times. it was jarring and would take away from these moments of reverence.
January 17, 2023
Sensitive, perceptive. A favourite author of mine.
July 6, 2023
Fran has a successful job and loving family. But a brief affair when on a conference in China turns her stable world upside-down as she struggles to identify who she is, when not bound by shackles of her work and family. The language is rich and floral and probably a bit too laboured for my liking but I finished it .
January 25, 2023
This author has such a powerful yet subtle touch - his words to be savoured, his books to be treasured.
February 11, 2023
Such perceptive and beautiful writing. I loved the story, especially having worked at the Sunbury campus at times.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews