Lives of longing, in separate directions

Photo: Simon Schluter

Alex Miller ... unsettling shift in focus.

Lovesong, By Alex Miller, Allen & Unwin, $39.99.

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AUSTRALIAN ALEX Miller has twice won his country's top award, the Miles Franklin Prize. His latest novel, Lovesong, could well see him on the way to a third.

This work of subtle brilliance is, on the surface, an uncomplicated tale of love. Australian boy meets Tunisian girl in Parisian restaurant. They fall in love, have a child and return to Australia. End of story. But "love is never simple". Within this apparently simplistic facade lies a depth of psychological tension, mystery and tragedy. Miller masterfully suggests a world of longing, unfulfilment and frailty without over-encumbering his story.

Australian teacher John Patterner shelters from a deluge in an ethnic restaurant in a dilapidated suburb of Paris. Entranced by the beautiful daughter of the Maltese proprietor, he returns several times to see Sabiha before proposing to her. As they run the restaurant for years after the death of her parents, so they long for a child.

John yearns for a return to his parents, while Sabiha desperately wants to take a child to her dying father in Tunisia. But it is not to be. Sabiha is forced into a highly unorthodox approach to get a daughter. John, very much in love with his patient and industrious wife, is a model of tolerance and understanding. They emigrate to Australia for a new life.

Miller sets his tale within a literary frame. Ageing Melbourne writer, Ken Patterson, sees the potential in this story for one last novel. He politely invites us in as his interest in John and Sabiha's background increases. It is John's sense of humane dignity that originally inspires him but, as the story unfolds, it is Sabiha's stoic struggle and the desperation of her plight that balance it.

Rather than surface clutter, it is the inner architecture of their lives and love that both Patterson and Miller explore. In this respect, Lovesong is a worthy successor to Miller's previous work, most notably in Landscape of Farewell and Prochownik's Dream.

The "delicate complexities" of lives enable Miller to gently probe the nexus between real life and fiction. Patterson acts as father-confessor to Patterner. He processes the story into fiction but without judging. He sifts and re-orders the facts – as Miller does with his own material. For a storyteller, it is the narrative flow that is the easiest: it is the "weight and depth and beauty" of the story "that most easily elude us".

Miller furnishes a story that suggests a great deal more than he reveals. There is a sense of the proximity of the potential for tragedy at every stage, but the book is also a celebration of the warmth of human passion and the dignity of individual lives. It is also a marvellous evocation of the sights and smells of the restaurant.

But there are surprising flaws in the work. The lurches between the Paris story and the Melbourne frame can be awkward. Halfway through, we are suddenly thrown from one setting to the other. The effect is unsettling, after the absence of the framing device for so long. The climax of the tale is likewise contrived. It is unprepared within the narrative and unexplained. There is a conflict between two minor characters that erupts into a violent incident that will change John and Sabiha's lives. The source of this conflict is unclear so it comes as a complete shock, a transparent ploy to shift the focus from Paris to Melbourne.

Otherwise, Miller's achievement is impressive. He writes with clarity and compassion. His story has a profundity beneath the surface narrative. This is a major talent writing near the peak of his ability.

Steve Walker is head of English at King's College in Auckland.

- © Fairfax NZ News