The Children's Bach

This book reminded me of the 1983 movie, The Big Chill, but with more nuance and an off-beat soundtrack (and an Australian setting). Published just a year later, it’s also about college classmates from the sixties whose orbits recross in the eighties. But while the film is smugly (says a smug Gen X-er) focused on Boomers’ disillusionment, Garner seems to see the era not as a failed revolution but a nudging open of the doors of convention. After graduating, paterfamilias Patrick and spiky-haired, loft-dweller Elizabeth made different life choices, but Garner never judges, only observes. In fact, she shows us characters through each other’s eyes—with only brief glimpses into their thoughts—making them less knowable, but more alive because of that. I adore Garner’s realism because it’s spare and straightforward and then she’ll throw in a fillip of particularity—a physical detail, a line of dialogue—that almost shifts the tone from fiction to documentary. Garner is a national literary treasure in her native Australia and she deserves a higher profile here. And YOU, Discerning Reader, deserve to be introduced to her unique style and sensibility.