The Children's Bach

by Helen Garner, Rumaan Alam (Foreword)

Helen Garner has been a literary institution in Australia for decades. Her perfectly formed novels embodied Australia’s tumultuous 70s and 80s, and her incisive nonfiction evokes the keen eye of the New Journalists. dubbed her “the Joan Didion of Australia.” Now, the beloved work that solidified her place among the masters of modern international letters, is available in a new US edition.

follows Dexter and Athena Fox, a husband and wife who live with their two sons in the inner suburbs of early-1980s Melbourne. Dexter is gregarious, opinionated, and old fashioned. Athena is a dutiful wife and mother, stoic yet underestimated. Though their son’s disability strains the family at times, they appear to lead otherwise happy lives.

But when a friend from Dexter’s past resurfaces, she and her cast of beguiling companions reveal another world to Dexter and Athena: a bohemian underground, unbound by routine and driven by desire, where choice seems to exist independent of consequence. And as Athena delves deeper into this other kind of life, the tenuous bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray.

Painted on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, is “a jewel” among Garner’s revered catalog (Ben Lerner), a finely etched masterpiece that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Literary Fiction, Classics, Novels, Book Club, Contemporary

176 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1984

About the author

Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has published many works of fiction including Monkey Grip, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Children's Bach. Her fiction has won numerous awards. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993.

Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.

Praise for Helen Garner's work

'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin

'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion...her radar-sure humour.'
Washington Post

'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'
Peter Craven, Australian

'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.'
Ed Campion, Bulletin

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helen Garner’s novella first appeared in 1984, it's centred on the slightly-bohemian culture of her corner of Melbourne’s suburban middle-class. Her sense of place is superb but her focus is on people, in particular Dexter and Athena Fox, their sons and narrow circle of acquaintances. Dexter is desperate to “knit meaning into the mess of everything.” A process bound up with vague longings for an imagined past filled with certainty. This past, Dexter’s Eden, is manifested partly through a photograph of nineteenth-century poet Tennyson walking with his wife and their two sons. It’s a firmly Victorian presentation of family, with Tennyson the striding patriarch at its heart. What’s shocking about the image, we’re told - although it’s not entirely clear who’s doing the telling - is how bundled up in layers Tennyson and his family are. But what’s actually shocking, at least to me, is Tennyson’s “gaunt” obviously exhausted wife. The image itself, originally cut from a magazine and stuck to the kitchen wall by Dexter, is slowly falling apart, a hint of what’s to come.

Garner’s plot is slender, familiar, middle-aged Dexter and Athena’s apparently settled life is disrupted: first by the reappearance of Dexter’s old friend Elizabeth with her much younger sister Vicki, then by Elizabeth’s on-again, off-again lover Phillip and his daughter Poppy. Athena makes a Bovary-like attempt to run off with Phillip, Dexter does something rash with Vicki. But somehow the family resumes its old patterns. But Garner seems more interested in reactions than events; in exploring issues around communication, connection and disconnection, and the position of women – she’s writing in the wake of a surging feminist movement. Like a Victorian wife, Athena has been assigned the role of angel in the house, responsible for all things domestic: Dexter can’t cook, he can’t clean, he doesn’t even know how to work a washing machine or take out a bin. And, like Tennyson’s wife, Athena herself is overlooked, slowly fading away while everyone around her thrives.

Athena’s responsibilities include looking after her son Billy. Billy’s backstory, like everyone else’s here, is vague. But it’s evident he’s non-speaking, and requires support in every aspect of daily life. The episodes centred on Billy, especially the dehumanising attitudes of other characters, made for intensely uncomfortable reading. Although it’s never clear how far the characters’ words reflect their genuine feelings or what they have been taught to think. I think it’s significant that Billy’s first introduced by his grandfather, a doctor who labels Billy as less-than-human: it was still common in the late seventies/early 1980s for doctors to place children like Billy in remote institutions, often written out of their family’s history altogether. Author Ben Lerner suggests Billy is essentially a plot device, highlighting the “ultimate inaccessibility” of others but I’m not entirely convinced. Garner based Billy on a friend’s child, and it’s possible she’s trying to highlight the extreme isolation of children like Billy, as well as the frustration and exhaustion of the mothers acting as primary carers. I noticed some readers have cast Athena as ‘bad mother’ and I could see why. But Athena is also depicted as a ‘good-enough’ mother at various points - there’re flashes of tenderness towards Billy that go beyond her words. I agree Athena’s not a desperately likeable figure but neither are any of the adults in Garner’s book.

Lerner considers Garner a “radically pared-down Virginia Woolf” and there are distinct echoes of Woolf in this. Garner’s storytelling is deliberately oblique, opaque even, abruptly shifting between points of view. There’s a precision to it, carefully constructed yet rooted in Garner’s everyday. Garner’s novella’s overflowing with arresting images and memorable lines – like Woolf she was a dedicated diarist, ruthlessly mining her own and her friends’ lives, transforming what she observed into “tiny bombs of meaning.” Reading this felt like eavesdropping on those lives, just as Garner’s characters routinely snoop on conversations, on buses, in shops, between neighbours. But just like snooping, Garner’s narrative frequently made me wonder if I’d missed a crucial part of the conversation. Like Rumaan Alam, another of Garner’s fans, I wasn’t sure what Garner was ultimately trying to say – some scenes were so slippery I scrabbled for a foothold.

Music is an important strand in Garner’s narrative, a number of the characters are musicians, and music often symbolises their individual predicaments: Athena is attempting to play simple pieces by Bach, Dexter likes to burst into song, Billy expresses himself through humming. But however much these performances overlap, the melodies never come together, the players are out of sync or simply clashing. Garner’s elements combine to form a bleak portrait of motherhood and family in a particular time and space. Her book’s undeniably striking and I really admired her general style, there were so many outstanding passages. But I wasn’t totally on board with her perspective, there was too much I found problematic or impossible to relate to.

Thanks to Netgalley and to publisher W&N Essentials for an ARC

[Ben Winch]

I don’t think this is a great book but it’s interesting, and it suggests a strange cottage industry of fiction-writing in Australia in the eighties which I’m glad was encouraged.

What’s good about it? The structure – free, gymnastic, skipping from surface to surface of each character like a stone over water. Also the world: Garner’s Melbourne (to me, like Soseki’s Tokyo) is more sensed than apprehended, and at its most vivid when Garner seems least to be describing it. And it’s short, only 90 pages – to me, the most exquisite length for a story.

What’s bad? The symbolism, the overreach, the heightened sense of its own refinement. Bach, Berlioz, Mozart – all are namechecked, but the rock musician – a key character – doesn’t once name his own influences. In a way that’s good, since it heightens the timelessness, but every time a piece of “high art” was mentioned I cringed – too much like a flashing of credentials. So too the language: when it settles into its groove it’s effective, and it’s understandable in her second novel (her first, Monkey Grip, was a stark confessional piece) that Garner would want to test her power, but too much of this is sleight of hand. Ironically, the apparently rigorous editing may highlight this: the impression is of a loose transitional work corseted for professional ends; in a larger literary scene, with less focus on her, she may have felt more free to fail. And don’t get me started on the “local colour”: at one point a character sits up watching the national anthem at station close on late night TV, a National Geographic style flourish I find hard to reconcile with fiction, and upon which neither author nor character offered reflection.

One last thing: at age 20 or so, when I first read this, I liked it. The atmosphere – the family like moles in their burrow. The fable quality. The clash of primitive and refined. I find its lapses embarrassing now, but I’m still rooting for its author, and I’d so rather have its minimal jagged-cum-hazy heightened realism than any number of slick post-Illywhacker “magic realist” tomes purporting to shine a light on Australia. Maybe what frustrates me in The Children’s Bach is that it so very nearly seems universal, but is held back by a sprinkling of Aussie tropes which I can’t help thinking are more for her perceived audience (including the literature board?) than for Garner. A small-scale but impressive piece of work.

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am on a little crusade to find small books. BorrowBox and my public library have been able to furnish a large choice. First published in 1984 by @textpublishing, here we have stalwart Helen Garner tell a simple yet affecting story of Athena and Dexter more firmly bound by the care of their boys, one ‘severely disabled’. “There’s nobody in there” proclaims Athena.

This parenting of a disabled child is hard work, Garner does not shy away from this. I am stating nothing revelatory here when I say HG is amazing, her books are course material at universities. She takes us into the world of the 1980’s Melbourne, reading of times before tech, a phone free music gig, normal things. This is what she does, tells the reader the comings and goings of the ordinary, delivered in a way that is as far away as the ordinary one could imagine.

Athena’s imagination veers toward the deaths of family members, the delivery of this revelatory info just popped out there, nothing flash.

This married couple’s life is disrupted by the arrival of sisters Elizabeth and Vicki. The elder having been involved with Dexter in times gone by. The arrival of the sisters and the musician partner of the eldest, forms a collision of people in Melbourne suburbia.

..they held eyes the woman made the grimace and Elizabeth returned it. Corners of the mouth go down, head tilts to one side, shoulders come up in a shrug. ‘Are they worth it?’. It was a secret showing of badges, of scars. Had Poppy seen? It would contaminate her. But Poppy was finishing a chapter.

Garner lacks fanfare, I love this. She says a lot about a lot, using the bare minimum. I wonder what teachers would say about this, in real academic terms. I wish these were my texts in my HSC in 93’ it would have been perfect timing. I instead was delivered Chaucer. As if my little brain could understand that!

[sAmAnE · Rating 3 out of 5]

با توجه به اینکه این داستان درباره‌ی زنی است که در گذشته با چالش‌های زیادی روبه‌رو بوده و با آن‌ها دست‌وپنجه نرم کرده، با دیدی امیدوارانه سراغ کتاب رفتم....
اما برخلاف انتظارم، آن‌طور که باید نتوانست نظرم را جلب کند. البته ناگفته نماند که داستان به‌خوبی تضاد میان شخصیت‌ها، شکل‌گیری دوستی‌ها، ارتباطات تازه، و تفاوت در سبک زندگی و فرهنگ را به تصویر کشیده بود. همچنین از اهمیت لحظات زندگی، روزمرگی‌ها، احساسات پنهان و کشمکش‌های درونی انسان‌ها سخن می‌گوید، مسائلی که هر فرد با آن‌ها درگیر است و گاه برای دیگران قابل درک نیست. چون دنیایی که هر یک از ما تجربه می‌کنیم، بسیار متفاوت از دنیای دیگری است. حتی اگر در ظاهر نشان دهیم که یکدیگر را درک میکنیم، و این دروغی بیش نیست!!
با این حال، لحن سرد، خشک و دور از دسترس داستان، چندان جاذبه‌ای برایم ایجاد نکرد. شاید دلیل این احساس، نبود خط داستانی پرکشش، پایان‌بندی جامع، و فضای سرد و بی‌احساس نویسنده باشد که مانع درگیری عاطفی من با شخصیت‌ها شد و شاید هم باید اینطور نوشته می‌شد...

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely not going to be for everyone. All of its characters are morally grey, and sometimes just outright bad people. It’s told in a Virginia Woolf-like stream of consciousness style, with plenty of head hopping within scenes and jarring transitions from location to location. However… I LOVED it!

This book is totally immersive with some startlingly beautiful lines and heartbreaking moments that absolutely shattered me. Its deeply flawed characters are a joy to get to know. And for today’s readers, reading it 40 years after it was written, it’s a peek back into another time. I absolutely loved reading it, and will be checking out more from this author.

[Sahar]

چند وقتی بود که توی لیست داشتمش و می‌خواستم بخونمش. الان یه هفته‌ست که تمومش کردم و خیلی حس متناقضی بهش دارم. هلن گارنر توی این کتاب به یه سری روابط پیچیده و کلا آسیب‌پذیری روابط می‌پردازه. نکته جالبش اینه که تمام این اتفاقات رو بدون اینکه بخواد درس اخلاق بده روایت می‌کنه. کتاب یک جاهایی حوصله‌سربر میشه و یه جاهایی هم برام گنگ می‌شد(خیلی برام سواله که کتاب تا چه حد شامل سانسور شده) ولی با همه‌ی این‌ها این‌قدر پایان‌بندی رو دوست داشتم که فکر نمی‌کنم هیچ‌وقت اون چند صفحه آخر و حسی که اون توصیفات و جملات پایانی بهم دادن، از ذهنم بره. خیلی برام سخته بهش امتیاز بدم. اصلا حتی تا چند روز برام سخت بود درباره‌ش حرف بزنم. شاید بعدا بتونم تصمیم بگیرم.

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 5 out of 5]

100 sayfada böylesine derin bir roman yazabilmek... çok güzeldi.
dünyanın en sıkıcı erkeği dexter ve karısı athena'nın geçmişten gelen iki kız kardeşle değişen hayatları anlatılıyor. ve bu kısacık romanda neredeyse herkes değişip dönüşüyor.
dümdüz bir adam olan dexter'a kızıyoruz önce, athena'ya hizmetçi gibi davranıyor, hiç aşık olmadığını gururla anlatıyor, karısının piyano çalma şevkiyle dalga geçiyor.
athena'yı çok seviyoruz ama sonra mesela birdenbire athena zihinsel engelli küçük oğlu için öyle şeyler söylüyor ki şok oluyoruz, ki bu gerçekçi ve maalesef doğru cümleler evde onlarla yaşamaya başlayan küçük kız kardeş vicki için de geçerli. yani helen garner ne kimseyi göklere çıkarıyor ne de yerin dibine sokuyor.
athena kendini bulacak, dexter mükemmel ahlaklı olmadığını keşfedecek, vicki anaç duygularıyla tanışacak, elizabeth kadın dayanışmasına inanacak, romanın pisliği philip aynı kalacak ama işte kadınları büyütenler de maalesef philip gibiler...
romanda kimsenin kimseyi dinlemediği bir akşam yemeği sahnesine, şiir gibi yazılmış bir çamaşır katlama ânına, yüzme havuzundaki çocukların çocukluğuna ve yazarın bize sekans sekans, bir film gibi değişen hayatları anlatmasına bayıldım.
fotoğraf, resim ve müziklerin de romanın görselliği ve şiirselliğiyle çok ilgisi var.
ve darmin hadzibegoviç müthiş çevirmiş, küfürler, söz oyunları, hepsi çok iyi.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this. It's short, just 158 pages, and you can tell that Garner honed in on what she wanted to do with these characters, no explanations, just straight into the family set up of Athena and Dexter, and their two children, and then the second, sort-of-couple Elizabeth and Philip, along with Poppy. Poppy is Philip's teenage daughter, and another teenager, Vicki, who is Elizabeth's younger sister by about 20 years.

What I didn't like is that the plot is so entirely predictable, and clearly from an earlier phase of Garner's life, when sex was still a big deal - as it always is with both young and young couples, here I mean young as in 40s with children. Yes, it's still a big deal - and it seems to drive most of the plot. So I found other details more interesting. For example, Athena's waspish comment about her son, Billy who is very autistic. He never speaks, only makes strange, musical whining noises which turn into screams when he is disturbed by sirens or by a low-pressure thunder storm. Vicki asks Athena:
'Why won't he ever look at me?'
'Don't bother to get romantic,' said Athena. 'There's nobody in there.'

And a sentence later, Elizabeth, who is Dexter's friend from uni, and Vicki's older sister speaks to Athena:

How do you bear it?' She said.
'Bear it?' Was this one of Elizabeth's dramatic exclamations, or did she really want to know? 'I've abandoned him, in my heart,' said Athena. 'It's work. I'm just hanging on till we can get rid of him.'
'Get rid of him?' said Elizabeth.
Athena's small, calm smile did not alter. 'The thought of it,' she said in her civilised voice, 'the very thought of it is like a dark cloud rolling away.'
'There might be a place for him, in a year or so,' said Dexter. He stood up and stretched his limbs. 'You know, sometimes he screams all day.'
'Dex is still romantic about him,' said Athena.

That conversation allows us to understand that this is not "the perfect family" as the blurb on the front cover indicates by David Nicholls, but there again, he's a man, and has probably never ironed a table-cloth, or entertained a disabled child either. The strain on the marriage which is not clear initially is unravelled with ethereal, dreamy comments on Athena, after she meets Philip. Elizabeth does nothing to intervene indicating Philip cannot help but wander, and makes a comment on the grisly world of singles, especially the music/ entertainment world Philip is in. Elizabeth has something similar career-wise, but it is never defined; it's enough that Vicki deflects from her sister's concrete loft apartment to the warmer vibe of the Fox home in the suburbs, Melbourne.

I liked especially all the domestic details, the fact especially that when Athena returns, sorry if you think this is a spoiler, she cleans the house. Only Athena knows how the washing machine works, or what to do with the pile of pizza boxes folded and dumped near the bin etc. Garner points out that the home has been waiting for her return, because until then, nothing feels good. There are so many small details of place, of space, of environment; when Vicki takes a shower in her sister's flat, there is a gum tree immediately outside the fire-escape door, which she opens and the harsh metallic leaves spring into her face, one cutting directly into her eye. The concrete steps leading down to the garden are hot, even early in the morning. When Athena sits on her front steps she notices the windows of the house opposite reflect the passage of cars and people not of the street in front, but one some half-mile away over the creek, so she sees that the windows are angled and not straight as she has always thought. Details, small, small details, but completely absorbing and real.

[Gorab · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5
Loved the premise, hated the execution.

Among the characters, loved the interactions between Athena and Vicki.
Dexter and Athena's chemistry was portrayed well. Realistic and practical. In contrast to Morty and Philip - though they were not really a couple. That's before everything started geeting royally skewed :D

Felt like I'd love it after the first few pages. But then it started to get dull, to the point of being obnoxious.

Sample this conversation:
“Have you been to America, Philip?" said Vicki.
‘The sort of singer who lounges across a glass piano" said Elizabeth.
"I like to have tortellini of a Friday," said Philip.
‘She was wearing these daggy flares,’ said Elizabeth, ‘with embroidered insets.’
‘I got my hand jammed between two speaker boxes,’ said Philip. ‘My finger burst like a sausage.”


Maybe it makes sense to someone. To me it doesn't.

[Roula · Rating 1 out of 5]

Κάπως έτσι φαντάζομαι στο ταπεινό μυαλό μου ότι μπορεί να πήγε η συζήτηση της συγγραφέως με τον εκδοτικό για αυτο το βιβλίο :
-ναι γειά σας θέλω να σας προτείνω να μου εκδώσετε αυτό το βιβλίο .
-μαλιστα περί τίνος πρόκειται?
-εμ είναι για δύο ζευγάρια που μπλέκουν τα μπούτια τους και έχουν και παιδιά και μια μαθαίνει και πιάνο και ο ένας είναι ροκας με τατουαζ.
-ναι αλλά η πλοκή ποια είναι ?
-εμμμμμμμ
-οκ,αλλά γίνεται κάτι μέσα στην ιστορία?
-εμμμμ
-μα πώς περιμένετε να πουλήσει ένα τέτοιο βιβλίο ?
-εμμμμμ θα βάλω το ένα από τα παιδιά να έχει αυτισμό . Εμμμμμ επίσης ο τίτλος θα έχει το όνομα του Μπαχ .
-εχουν καποια ιδιαίτερη αναφορά όλα αυτά μέσα στο βιβλίο ?
-εμμμμμ
-girl, sign here !!!!

🎖️Το βραβείο πιο αδιάφορου βιβλίου που κυριολεκτικά αύριο θα έχω ξεχάσει πηγαίνει οπωσδήποτε σε αυτό !! Δε θα έμπαινα καν στη διαδικασία βαθμολογίας ή ποστ ,αλλά με θύμωσε κάπως το ότι το θέμα του αυτισμού που αναφέρεται ως -λογικα- κυρίαρχο θέμα της ιστορίας και ήταν αυτό που με έκανε να θέλω να το διαβάσω ,καλύπτει το πολύ 3 4 αναφορές μέσα στην κατά τα άλλα αδιάφορη , μπερδεμένη ,με παντελή έλλειψη συνάφειας και λογικής ιστορία ..αυτά από εμένα και ο άσσος μου με αγάπη !!
🌟/5 αστέρια

[Gohnar23 · Rating 4 out of 5]

#️⃣4️⃣6️⃣2️⃣ Read & Reviewed in 2025 💔🩸
Date : 🚀 Friday, September 12, 2025 🚫🔻❌
Word Count📃: 36k Words 🧨🔪🎈

⋆⭒𓆟⋆｡˚𖦹𓆜✩⋆ >-;;⁠;⁠;€ᐷ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡

( ˶°ㅁ°) !! My 36th read in "READING AS MANY BOOKS AS I CANNN 😢 cuz smth....happened.....irl.........😥" September ⚡

4️⃣🌟, certainly everyone is interesting in their own morally good and morally bad way
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So no one in the world is perfect, but this book just proves it better as it shows you the perfection and the 'goodness' of people and presents you the evil version of them, the horrible parts, the morally gray parts. Every single person in the family has their own dark secrets that they don't want anyone else to learn because these realizations can ruin their reputation and their humanness.

The writing style is unique and glenn's both of the locations, the scenes and the personal thought process, the consciousness of the person and the actions that appear in the scene itself. It is greatly well written but what this book lacks is a general plot. While all of them are great characters, the relationships and the interactions that happened between them is seemingly random and mostly all for casual purposes. There is no plot that connects all of their interactions together and not a single cohesive theme to follow. Definitely many people have died in here and their death are one thing that drives the plot but their thoughts and internal beliefs are not enough to be the minimum for a good book.

[Penni Russon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic companion read for The Spare Room - similar themes and preoccupations at a different stage of life - at times the crossovers took my breath away. Reading Helen Garner's body of work is like reading a life, and her brutal, tender honesty allows an intensely intimate glimpse into the interior experience of a person.

[ola ✶ cosmicreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

mój typ literatury

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Children’s Back assumes it title from a musical textbook that one of the characters – Athena -- displays on her piano. Elizabeth – who has newly re-entered her husband Dexter’s life – teasingly says, “Bach is never simple, but that is one reason why we should all try to master him.”

This novel is not simple either. Or else it is deceptively so. It’s easy enough to lose your place, or else lose count of which character is which. So I’ll start right there: Athena and Dexter live in Melbourne, Australis with their two sons, one of whom is severely developmentally disabled. A random encounter re-introduces Dexter to his once-close college friend Elizabeth and her younger sister, Vicki. Into this group comes Philip, a musician and sometime-boyfriend and of Elizabeth, and Poppy, his daughter.

There is a sort of elusive rhythmic sensation that flows through the book as characters touch and occasionally bounce off each other. It’s not a character study, not really, yet characters are revealed. Nor is it a book that’s precisely crafted to study shifting alliances, although certainly some of that. What is it about, then? As the prelude suggests: it’s about how life happens to all of us and how we subsist within the moral universe that is modern life.

This is a book where every sentence – every scene – holds little gems while some puzzlement weaves through nearly all scenes. For this reader, it was more about what I felt than what I emphatically understand. Just listen to the notes and let them carry you away and guide you. I owe thanks to Pantheon Books for sending me a copy of this book – first issued in 1984 – in exchange for an honest review.

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well. This was very well written - a masterful execution of wordcraft.

It was also aggravatingly distant - Garner never gives you enough to really like or understand any of the characters, but just enough to make you curious. It's literary, self-consciously so, to the detriment of a sense of humanity.

And what's with desolate literary stories about desolate suburban life, anyway? Gah. I can't see that Athena's plot arc (which seemed to be the 'main' one?) had any redemption in it. She came back dreaming of playing the piano, a metaphor for enjoying life, but *did* she? Did she play, did she enjoy it? Or did life just drag on? I don't think she gained much - certainly not any deeper connection with the members of her family - and everyone else suffered more.

Which brings us to the extraordinary dehumanising treatment of Billy, a child with autism. I think, I *hope*, that his family's callous treatment of him and lack of desire to engage with him is intentionally symptomatic of their inability (and especially Athena's inability) to really see outside of their own heads and engage with anyone else at all. That'd make it 'disability as metaphor', which is overdone, but better than the alternative (Helen Garner actually thinks there's 'no one in there').

[Sinem · Rating 2 out of 5]

kitapla ilgili hislerimi tek cümlede özetleyecek olursam "baba biz ne okuyoruz biri bana anlatsın."
yani... son zamanlarda bu kadar bağlamsız, bu kadar çerçevesiz, bu kadar kimin kim olduğu ve ne yaşandığı belirsiz bir şey okumamıştım.
kitapla ilgili söyleyebileceğim bir tane iyi bir şey var o da şiddeti yüksek dürüst cümleler. aile ve arkadaş arasında asla yüksek sesle söylenmeyen ama hep düşünülen cümleleri okumak hoşuma gitti, onda da çeviri bariyerine takıldım. engelli çocukla iletişim kurmaya çalışan arkadaşına çocuk tepki vermeyince annesi çocuğuna bakıp "there is nobody in there" diyor ve biz bunu "evde kimse yok" olarak okuyoruz. cümleyi olduğu gibi çevirse bile daha anlamlı olacak şey böyle manasız bir şeye dönüştürülmüş. üzücü.

[Mihaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi-a plăcut mult stilul autoarei, liric dar și foarte tăios când a fost nevoie să arate cum sunt oamenii în realitate, egoiști, slabi și, mai ales, felul spectaculos în care a știut să descrie cotidianul, să transforme simple detalii în comori. În doar 150 de pagini a redat foarte mult din viața unei familii supuse schimbării inevitabile, uzurii și suferinței, iar personajele, toate, sunt cireașa de pe tort.
O scriitură foarte bună, o franchețe și o lipsă de falsă pudoare, toate m-au făcut s-o îndrăgesc pe doamna Garner.

[Sammy Mylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

gorgeous prose with unlikeable characters and an overall meaning i don’t vibe with. filing this away into the portion of my brain dedicated to wonderfully constructed novels that just aren’t my thing

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book reads like Garner has spent a few years carrying around a notebook and making random observations of people and moments around her. She has then strung these together into a narrative and tried to give the observations post-hoc relevance. The result is a bunch of striking descriptions that do little to probe the complexities of the realities of domestic servitude, the book's apparent subject.

The women in this story are all treated like anthropological exhibits, to be catalogued and observed from the outside in order to make them fit the author's nihilistic world view. The treatment of a disabled child, whose point of view is assumed not to exist at all, is particularly telling. Any suggestion that the child (who is capable of walking around and expressing emotion) has a point of view is quickly derided by everyone as 'being Romantic about it'. When the babysitter suggests thinking about throwing him under a bus, the child's mother agrees that she's thought about doing it many times.

This is presented a bravely honest observation. Uh... no. The primary carer of a moderately disabled child thinking about escaping the relentless burden of that work by throwing the child under a bus would be a bravely honest observation. But such thoughts do not exist in isolation. They are tangled in amongst love, complexities, guilt, not to mention social expectations a primary carer parent would feel in that situation. A person who secretly has fantasies of escape or admits them under pressure is one thing; a mother who casually agrees with a new babysitter about the desirabiliyt of throwing her child under a bus, and expresses no love or affection towards her own children at any point in the story is in a whole different category. Like, a diagnosable category.

Instead of throwing the child under the bus, the characters rid themselves of a rabbit. The rabbit tries to cling to safety. They tip it out to die and walk away feeling lighter.

No one in this book apparently feels love or compassion. No one thinks about the future or the consequences of their actions. Indeed, no one really thinks about anything. They just feel (but only neutral or miserable feelings), float, and do. The clue as to why the book is written this way might be in the book itself, where a character giving artistic advice says:

"Look, I'll give you a tip. Go home and write it again. Take out the cliches. Everybody knows 'It always happens this way' or 'I went in with my eyes wide open'. Cut that stuff out. Just leave int he images. Know what I mean? You have to steer a line between what you understand and what you don't. Between cliche and the other thing. Make gaps. Don't chew on it. Don't explain everything. Leave holes. The music will do the rest."

As another reviewer said, this reads something like Garner's mission statement for the book. I suspect that Garner was able to think of many non-cliched ways to describe people being selfish and detached, but whatever observations on love and happiness she may have had were banal, and so (in the interests of art) she cut them. The result is a book in which the prose is vibrant and evocative, but also where every character appears to be a psychopath. #priorities

I won't spoiler what happens, except to say that the simple plot of the book culminates in this line: "This was modern life, then, this seamless logic, this common sense, this silent tit-for-tat. This was what people did. He did not like it. He hated it. But he was in its moral universe now, and he could never go back."

To be honest, I am so very sick of this narrative. It reminds me of reading Anne Rice at fifteen, and feeling so very grown up that my understanding of morality could transcend conventional bounds, and the preachy simplistic rules we were given as children. The gist of the narrative, for those who are unfamiliar, is that at some point everyone realises that the world's pretty shallow and awful, and everyone in it is shallow and awful, and freed of that terrible baggage, they now enter a world where hurting people doesn't really matter any more.

This is the well-developed morality of the teenager who, having realised that Disney presents a distortion and their parents are fallible, assumes society knows nothing and stomps off to their room, leaving everyone else to do the dishes for them. Responsible people are a total buzz-kill.

Unlike a man-o-sphere rant, Garner's writing is not bitter or angry, but it is joyless. There is much name-dropping of Educated Cultural References, but not in a way that probes into them or connects them to anything. Rather, the name-dropping is reminiscent of the narrator in American Psycho, whose monologue is peppered with references to designer labels because these are cobbled together to form the facade of a 'successful Wall Street trader', to show how this role is a performative one, the realisation of a social expectation, and such markers of success tell us little about what kind of human being the person really is. In The Children's Bach, it is not a character but Garner herself who litters her observations with such references. The point of view moves fluidly in and out of characters' heads so that their personalities blur and their subjective perspectives are drowned beneath Garner's own detached perspective. This feels less self-aware than self-righteous.

Perhaps when this book was written in 1984, it was feminist simply to focus on a small-scale domestic drama in this way. Perhaps... but to what end?

Female empowerment and sexual liberation? For a novel about female sexual empowerment, the women appear to get little to nothing out of sex. Sex acts and sexual behaviour are not described, but are implied to be for the benefit of men, with the women getting no apparent pleasure out of them. But I suppose this logically flows from the fact that-like robots-none of the women appear to want anything, or aspire to anything. The characters appear to sleep with each other out of sheer boredom. #girlpower

The simplistic choice Athena makes in this story is one shorn of any real dilemma that most real women would have in that situation, and accordingly has little to say about what binds women into these family structures that restrict their choices. Love and attachment play a pivotal role in those structures, so Garner's artistic omissions fundamentally undermine any kind of coherent feminist critique of Athena's situation.

I read this book because it was chosen for a queer / feminist book club. It's not queer, so I assume it was chosen as a 'feminist' pick. This was a mystery because it did not seem particularly feminist, either.

5 stars for the prose
1 star for content and meaning

(A slightly different version of this review that focuses more on what I took away from it in terms of writing advice appears on my blog: www.compulsivewriter.net).

[meliverse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bu sene benim için Helen Garner okuma yılı gibi oldu. Neyse ki şikâyetim yok, hâkimeanım.

“… Geceleri insanların kahkahalarının gürültüsü yüzünden müzik kutusunun sesini daha çok açıyorlarmış. Ama sabahın erken saatlerinde, işlerine giden müşterilerin gazetelerini okudukları o huzurlu vakitte basları rahatça işitebiliyormuşsun.”

Oh be, her yerinden kasetler, baslar, şarkılar, aryalar, aksak ritimler, kuş şakımaları taşan bir kurmaca okudum. Metnine gündelik hayatın “seslerini” yediren kitapların atmosferinde süzülmek içeriğine rağmen keyifli oluyor. Helen Garner kitabın ismiyle işaret ettiği gibi müziği karakterler hakkında sufle veren bir unsur olarak kullanmış ve kurduğu dünyayı oyuncaklı hale getirmiş ki bunu “Eve gidince baştan yaz. Ama klişeleri at… Yalnız imgeler kalsın… Anlayabildiklerinle anlayamadıkların arasında bir denge tutturman lazım. Klişelerle klişe olmayan şeyler arasında. Boşluklar bırak. Lafı uzatma. Her şeyi açıklama. Boşlukları kapatma. Gerisini müzik halleder.” sözleriyle de itiraf ediyor.

Japonların “ayatori” dediği, bizim çocukken “ipi parmağa geçirme oyunu” diye bildiğimiz “bağ” oyununa benzeyen dokuz kişilik bir ip oyunu hikayesi gibi Çocuklar İçin Bach. Ayrıca Virginia Woolf’u da etkilemiş şair Alfred Tennyson’ın karısı ve iki çocuğuyla bir bahçede çektirdiği fotoğrafıyla tanıştıran bir açılışı var ve kitabın içinde kalmak için de güçlü bir sebep sunuyor. Anlatım, bahsi geçen fotoğrafı hiç görmememe rağmen okurken gözceğizlerimle bir yenisini çekebilmemi sağlayacak kadar görkemli. Fotoğrafı gugılladıktan sonra karşıma çıkan siyah beyaz karenin Dexter’ı neden etkilemiş olabileceğini sorgulamamsa tesadüf değil. Zamanla Garner’ın bu kareyi neden seçtiği zihnimde berraklaşıyor. Dexter’ın da Tennyson gibi iki çocuklu bir ailesi var. Tennyson ailesinin fotoğrafı yemek yaparken sıçrayan yağlardan artık duvara yapışmaz hale gelip düşse de her defasında duvardaki yerini koruyor, kurtarılıyor, tıpkı Fox ailesi gibi. Mutfakta eşi Athena’nın Bach’ın küçük prelüdlerini tıngırdattığı bir piyanoları olduğunu, Dexter’ın sesinin ortamlarda arya sanatçılarını aratmadığının konuşulduğunu ve hatta özel gereksinimli oğulları Billy’nin müzik dâhisi olduğunu düşünecek kadar müzikle iç içe bir aileyle birlikte olacağımı bilmek “hadi hayırlısı” diye mırıldanmama sebep oluyor. Birkaç sayfa sonra Dexter’ın neredeyse yirmi yıldır görüşmediği arkadaşı Elizabeth’le tanışma anım da arkasında annesinin “Vicki: Değerli yük.” yazdığı, bir valizden kafasını uzatmış çocuğun fotoğrafıyla oluyor. Annesinin kendi ağırlığından kurtulduğunu ve öldüğünü öğreniyorum. “Yirmi yıl arayla doğmuş iki kız kardeş arasında ne mümkündür? Büyük olan ablalık mı yapmalıdır, annelik mi?” diyen Elizabeth’in annesinden kalan bu yükle nasıl baş edeceğini merak etmemem mümkün değil. Elizabeth’in kızı Poppy’le yaşayan Philip isimli bir müzik grubunda çalan sevgilisi var. Nokta.

Bu dokuz kişilik “ağ”a ya da diğer bir ifadeyle “çarpışan yaşamlar”a ait bir olay örgüsü anlatılmamalı ya da karakterlerden birini “baş” ilan etmemeli. Karakterlerin omuzlarından seke seke bu kitabı okumalı.

1984’ten bir kitap kahramanı bile “Modern hayattan nefret ediyorum” diye sesleniyorsa bugün bizler napalım? Belki Athena gibi bomboş bir evde avuç dolusu notayı havaya savuramayız, ancak müziğe sığınabiliriz. İsmi geçen şarkı ve sanatçılar için buraya bakarlar:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0px...

[Astrid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well. On the front of this book is the tag line 'The classic contemporary Australian novel'.

Right. The characters in this are all depressed suburbanites, dissatisfied with their existence or shocked by others' ways of life.
The characters were all a little bit whingey.

Having said that, Garner's descriptions put me right in there with the characters and the scenery grew around me as I read. But most of the time I just wanted to grab the characters by the shoulders and tell them to get over themselves.

[Parastoo Khalili · Rating 2 out of 5]

کتاب با توصیف عکس یکی از شخصیت‌های داستان به نام دکستر شروع میشه که اون این عکس رو روی یخچال چسبونده.
داستان برای من داستان عجیبی بود ولی به شدت حوصله‌سر بر؛
به این صورت که دو خانواده خیلی یهویی هم دیگه رو پیدا میکنند و هی کم کم توی هم حَل میشن. مثلا اول داستان الیزابت سایه ی آتنا رو با تیر میزنه و خواهر الیزابت، ویکی چندان ازشون خوشش نمیاد ولی کم کم این شخصیت‌ها توی هم دیگه حَل میشن و مثل این میمونه که انگار میفهمن به همدیگه احتیاج دارند. ویکی توی آتنا دنبال مهر و محبت مادری میگرده و آتنا و دکستر باعث میشن الیزابت هی به گذشته رجوع کنه.
در هرصورت داستان عجیبی هستش، چندان نپسندیدم، و به نظرم موقعی باید خونده بشه که وقت و حوصله‌ی کافی داشته باشید.

یه چیزی که من یهویی فهمیدم این بود که دکستر با مورتی (یا همون الیزابت) دوست دختر دوست پسر بودن و این اصلا توی متن ترجمه شده مشخص نیست و من واقعا فکر کردم این دوتا خواهر برادر بودن. نشر بیدگل واقعا شورش رو درآورده.

[Justus · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an actual Australian citizen I sometimes feel a bit of chagrin over how few Australian writers I've read. I'm pretty sure I've read more Argentinian authors than Australian authors. A long time ago I tried (and failed) to read Voss. I read The Dry a year or two back and enjoyed it. And then after that...uh... Garth Nix is Australian and I read one of his books!

The Guardian called Helen Garner "Australia's greatest living writer" so I decided to give this slim novel, written and set suburban Melbourne in the early 1980s, a crack.

Okay, look, I read this and I still couldn't really tell you what it was about. Dexter and Athena are happily married and have two kids. One day at the airport Dexter runs into an old university friend he hasn't seen in 20 years and suddenly Elizabeth (the university friend), Vicki (friend's 17 year old much younger sister sister), and Philip (friend's boyfriend) flit into their life. And, uh, some stuff happens. They come over and have dinner. They go to watch some bands play live music. Vicki moves out of Elizabeth's studio apartment into Dexter & Athena's spare room.

‘Two four six eight, bog in don’t wait,’ said Dexter.

After I finished this I read the publisher blurb -- "Elizabeth draws the couple out into a world whose casual egotism they had barely dreamed of. How can they get home again?" -- but I struggle to actually see much of that in the book.

‘Where’s the toilet?’ said Vicki.
‘Right down in the corner of the yard,’ said Dexter.
Vicki lit the candle. The door would not stay shut.

It has nice little touches of Australian-ness that make me nostalgic. But there were two big things that kept pulling me out of the book.

One, there's a pretty horrible extended & recurring section involving Dexter & Elizabeth's severely handicapped young son. (Which comes across as a completely nonverbal austism, though I'm not convinced Garner actually intended it as anything but "he's retarded".) Everyone in the book is completely terrible to the child. Like, in a way that any parent with a child with autism should definitely not read this book.

The mother says, "there's nobody in there".

‘How do you bear it?’ she said.
‘Bear it?’ Was this one of Elizabeth’s dramatic exclamations, or did she really want to know? ‘I’ve abandoned him, in my heart,’ said Athena. ‘It’s work. I’m just hanging on till we can get rid of him.’

Someone asks the mom whether she's ever considered just pushing him in front a car and the mom says yep. As another review points out: it isn't clear whether the son is supposed to be a metaphor for the character' narcissism (but then you've got disability as metaphor, which is kinda icky) or whether the whole thing doesn't really have any meaning behind it at all. After all, the book came out in the early 1980s and neither this book nor the author are especially well-known as path-breaking disability rights advocates.

And remember that blurb implying that Dexter and Athena are kinda, sorta the good guys in the novel? That's hard to mesh with Athena acting like this.

My biggest stumbling block, though, is the entire book doesn't make any of the characters feel authentic because they are all cultural snobs despite being suburban housewives and guys who play in a band. It's almost a caricature: they talk how an out of touch elite imagines actual people talk.

When Dexter meets Elizabeth in the airport after not seeing her for almost two decades one of the first things he says is:

‘We’ll go together down. Who wrote that?’

‘Browning. “My Last Duchess.”’

Random literary name checks with people you haven't seen in two decades are tight.

Dexter sings opera in the house. I mean, as you do. I'm sure that was a totally common thing in suburban Melbourne. He just casually thinks

They had cold, passionless faces. He knew the phrase for it: ‘l’ inébranlable résolution de ne pas être ému.’

Basically a convincing picture of a working man with a stay-at-home wife living in the suburbs of Melbourne!

Philip, the late 30s guy who is still in a band says things like:

‘I like him,’ said Philip. ‘He’s like a character out of a Russian novel, or a Wagner opera.’

Totally makes sense that a musician would pull random literary references instead of comparing him to, you know, some eccentric musician.

What does Athena do when she's at home? She just lies on the floor listening to Haydn concertos. Pretty normal thing for housewives. And then she says, with a straight face,

‘Haydn. It’s in C major. Isn’t that supposed to be the optimistic key? I could never understand why I always felt so cheerful after I’d heard that concerto, till I thought what key it was in.’

Ah yes, the key it was in! Ugh. Who even talks like this?

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

I wasn't sure,for a while, exactly how I felt about this novel, but I've now decided it's brilliant. It definitely won't be for everyone, and you need to read deeper than surface level here and read between the lines, to really get everything out of it.

It's like a more literary and complex Elizabeth Strout. But the one downfall with Garner is that she doesn't quite generate the same depth of feeling in the reader for her characters in the way that Strout does.

But oh, so many incredible lines, so many hard-to-swallow human truths, just so much sheer honesty. The ending was exceptional.

It's the kind of book I almost want to study, to pick apart line by line.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

more like 3.5. i really loved the writing style but something about this book is deeply sad. Not a satisfying sad. A kind of sad that comes from feeling as though the longer we are alive the more hollow and harrowing life becomes.

[Susie Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Garner does it again. the depth in this novella is incredible for its length. she knows people and life very well

[Mayk Can Şişman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Güzel başlayıp ivmesini epey kaybeden bir romana dönüştü benim için ‘Çocuklar İçin Bach’. Yazarın dilini akıcı bulsam da karakterleri yüzeysel, diyalogları boğucu, kitabı da temposuz buldum maalesef.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having a Helen Garner moment. Very Melbourne, set in the very familiar Merri Creek location, the great dust storm of 1983 even getting a mention.

Perfect read to start Novella November.

[Mewa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don Anderson* opowieści Garner porównał do pocztówek, jakie „ukazują starannie dobrane obrazy, które jednak, z jakiejś przyczyny, więcej mówią o nieprzyjemnej stronie rzeczywistości, która została ukryta“.
Ben Lerner** nazwał „Małe preludia“ prawdziwym klejnotem, jako że autorka „uchwyciła naprzemienną przejrzystość i nieprzejrzystość innych“.
Obaj w tych słowach zdradzili całą istotę mikropowieści Helen Garner.


* Australijski autor, edytor, esejista, recenzent... Prowadził kolumnę literacką w „The National Times“ oraz „The Sydney Morning Herald“.
** Amerykański pisarz i poeta. Finalista National Book Award in Poetry. W Polsce wydana została jego powieść „Topieka“ (Literackie, 2021).

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word “elliptical” comes to mind. Helen Garner leaves an awful lot out of this book: for instance, introductions, segues, exposition, explanation, important details. And yet, there is enough - easily enough in only 158 uncrowded pages - to make an impact. Garner is definitely of the school of “showing” instead of “telling.”

There are four adults, three children and one on-the-cusp-of-adulthood adolescent. The adults - Dexter, Athena, Elizabeth and Philip - represent two different ways of being in relationship, or perhaps conducting one’s emotional life, but the drama and conflict happens when those drawn lines get entangled.

Dexter and Athena have a home and a family together. The home is messy, damaged and patched - but it has warmth and the comfort of ritual. It doesn’t quite have solidity; the house itself is always threatening to come apart. And it is too open as well; doors never locked, an outside loo, the constant intrusion of the neighbour’s chaotic and angry lives.

In the first paragraph of the novel, Garner describes a photograph of the poet Tennyson’s family group and it seems to act as symbol and foreshadowing both:

Dexter stuck this picture up on the kitchen wall, between the stove and the bathroom door. It is torn and stained, and coated with a sheen of splattered cooking grease. It has been there a long time. It is always peeling off, swinging sideways, dangling by one corner. But always, before it quite falls off the wall, someone saves it, someone sticks it back.

Elizabeth - the friend and roommate of Dexter’s university days - is Athena’s opposite. A stylish career woman, but all hard edges and lack of emotional commitment. She seems to lack moral integrity as well, as embodied in her casual and constant shoplifting. Elizabeth lives in a sort of modern warehouse that is not conducive to any kind of domestic life. When Elizabeth’s much younger sister Vicki comes to live with her, on the death of their mother, Vicki’s incredulous reaction is more revealing than pages of description might be:

There is a TV, a phone on the floor, a bed like a big pink cloud. Where does she cook? Where does she wash herself? Where will I sleep? Everybody needs a bed. There are no walls or rooms.

Unsurprisingly, Vicki gravitates to the emotional and physical force field of Athena and Dexter’s home. At first the attraction seems to be Athena, and it seems natural for VIcki to look for a mother replacement, or at least a more maternal older sister figure. Only after I finished the novel did I realise that Vicki is “playing house” in the role of disruptor; there’s no real tragedy or melodrama in it, though, except for, perhaps, Dexter’s own wounded sense of self.

This is a particularly earthy domestic novel, and the most memorable scene - for me - is the one in which Athena returns to her wrecked house and methodically and doggedly restores it back to order. This is what women are capable of doing, the author seems to say. Imperfect as they may be, mothers are still the fragile glue that that keeps a home (a family) bonded together.