The Children's Bach
First edition
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| Author | Helen Garner |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | McPhee Gribble |
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Publication date
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1984 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 96pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 12235425 |
| 823 19 | |
| LC Class | PR9619.3.G3 C45 1984 |
| Preceded by | Honour & Other People's Children: Two Stories |
| Followed by | Postcards from Surfers |
The Children's Bach (1984) is a novella by Australian writer Helen Garner. It was her third published book, and her second novel. It was well received critically.
The novel, set in Melbourne, concerns a couple, Athena and Dexter, who lead a self-sufficient life with their two sons, one of whom is severely disabled. Their apparently "comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past." Elizabeth brings with her her sister Vicki, Elizabeth's sometime lover Philip, and Philip's prepubescent daughter, Poppy. Through them, Athena and Dexter are drawn into a world whose ideas and values test the foundations of their relationship.
Helen Garner has said that, "I never have a theoretical idea for a book. What I write usually emerges from things I've witnessed, experiences I've had myself, or that people around me have had … I don't invent a book out of thin air. I need —or I did at the time I wrote The Children's Bach— a bed of detail for the things to be based on before I can start to make something up". Garner goes on to say that, "I didn't know what was going to happen. I just knew that I wanted this family and that there would be a little boy who had something wrong with him, so you could only reach him through music. I hardly had any more idea than that."
Kerryn Goldsworthy writes that almost all of Garner's fiction addresses "the relationship between sexual behaviour and social organisation; the anarchic nature of desire and the orderly face of the institution of 'family'". In The Children's Bach this is played out through its exploration of what happens when an apparently stable and caring marriage is challenged by the introduction of external forces —through Elizabeth, Philip and Vicki— which result in a "clash of values". The novel gives "a sense that characters are redefining their perspectives instead of being depicted at a stage when they are already locked into a fixed way of seeing, and surviving in, the world".
Given the title, it is not surprising that music is the most obvious motif in the novella. It has been discussed by most of its critics and reviewers, as well as by Garner herself. Tiffin writes that music has always been important to Garner but that in the earlier works "it offered, like sex or drugs, a way of immersion or escape". However, in The Children's Bach "it is associated with most of the characters … and it generally suggests sanity and harmony. While Philip uses music to exploit people, it is a mark of Athena's unglamorous dedication to making life work, and of Dexter's uncomplicated gusto."
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