A brief affair, p.1
A Brief Affair, page 1
PRAISE FOR ALEX MILLER
Max
‘A perfectly poised autumnal masterpiece. Only a master of the craft of the novel could write a book of non-fiction of such quiet power and beauty.’ —Robert Manne, The Age
‘A successful combination of the life of Max Blatt and the gripping story of the author’s search for him.’ —Charmian Brinson, Emeritus Professor of German, Imperial College London
‘A wonderful book. Miller is faithful to Max Blatt’s story, to his silences and to his sadness. It is a story that needs to be heard.’ —Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University
‘With Max, Miller the novelist has written a wonderful work of non-fiction, as fine as the best of his novels. Always a truth-seeker, he has rendered himself vulnerable, unprotected by the liberties permitted to fiction. Max is perhaps his most moving book, a poignant expression of piety, true to his mentor’s injunction to write with love.’ —Raimond Gaita, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy, King’s College London, and award-winning author of Romulus, My Father
‘A long, deeply absorbing and moving detective story … a celebration of the way [Max Blatt] is remembered, with all the inevitable gaps and imperfections, in the lives of those who follow him.’ —Australian Book Review
‘There is a slow, elegant circling in the storytelling, as if Miller is holding the precious shards up to the light and gently turning them to reveal their every facet … [Max] offers a deeply moving meditation on history, imagination and truth, and portrays a fascinating, visceral wrestling with facts.’ —Weekend Australian
‘A powerful, humane portrait of a man who suffered immense loss.’ —The Age
‘A moving and masterfully written testament to the power of friendship.’ —The Guardian
‘Max is haunted by devastating insights … Miller’s intelligent love has created a tale for the ages.’ —Sydney Morning Herald
‘Beautifully written, engaging, deeply human … a book to savour and to pass among your friends.’ —Canberra Times
The Passage of Love
‘Miller’s story is long, intense and vital.’ —Geordie Williamson
‘The Passage of Love is capacious, wise, and startlingly honest about human frailty and the permutations of love over time. Frankly autobiographical, it is also a work of fully achieved fiction, ripe with experience, double-voiced, peopled with unpredictable men and women, and set in Miller’s landscapes that characteristically throb with life.’ —Morag Fraser, ‘Books of the Year’, Australian Book Review
‘Half a dozen of Miller’s novels are likely to be judged among the finest of the past quarter century. They were written in the course of a career that has showcased Miller’s subtlety, narrative craft, moral acuity and delight in writing about what he loves.’ —Weekend Australian
‘Conflicting demands that can throttle creativity are a big motif in this bildungsroman … A thoughtful autobiographical work by an award-winning Australian novelist … traces themes of art and commitment through Crofts’ relationships with three women. Miller pulls back from the narrative several times in interludes that return to the first person of the much older man and highlight how memory has many layers. A rich addition to the growing shelf of autofiction from a seasoned storyteller.’ —Kirkus (starred review)
‘… delivers an enthralling fusion of fiction and memoir.’ —Tom Griffiths, Books of the Year, Australian Book Review
‘While Miller’s novels are immediately accessible to the general reading public, they are manifestly works of high literary seriousness—substantial, technically masterly and assured, intricately interconnected, and of great imaginative, intellectual and ethical weight.’ —Robert Dixon in Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time
‘It is riveting and a masterpiece in every way … great emotional depth … a magnificent achievement.’ —Nicholas Birns, Professor of English at the New School in New York and author of Contemporary Australian Literature
‘The Passage of Love is a novel that explicitly revisits aspects of Miller’s life with the aim of shedding light on subjects beyond its biographical orbit … a slow-burning catalogue of marital breakdown enlivened only by Miller’s trademark prose, limpid and grave and stately in progression, each sentence fragment tongue-and-grooved with the next.’ —Australian Book Review
‘An intimate book … Miller has a gift for examining the domestic and exploring private lives.’ —Good Reading
‘The Passage of Love offers an insight into a great writer’s journey … Miller maintains a tangible sense of place throughout, in particular, the landscape of isolated country NSW. This novel is a must for fans of Miller.’ —Books+Publishing
‘There is something elegiac about The Passage of Love, in its detailing of a vanished 1950s Melbourne, in the passion and urgency of its fierce protagonist … Miller’s writing has the muscularity of decades-earned craft, spare and unsentimental, probing the sinews of marriage, delineating the arc of love affairs, of struggle and disappointment.’ —Irish Times
‘Miles Franklin award-winner Miller has crafted a novel that’s individual in its essence with originality and sensitivity.’ —PS News
‘The Passage of Love is a gift. It tells us about living with an undeniable creative force and the consequences of being utterly transparent in one’s desires. It is an observation, a sharing of knowledge and a transcript of a life lived with yearning … Extraordinary.’ —Readings
‘The most candid, sharing, generous book I’ve read in a long, long time.’ —ABC Radio
‘A great read with profound insights into the nature of love and creativity.’ —Australian Financial Review
‘An exquisitely personal life story told in a fictional style … Miller draws on memories, dreams, stories, love and death to create a moving and raw fictional novel that is the closest to an autobiography likely to be read from him. In a rich blend of thoughtful and beautifully observed writing, the lives of a husband and wife are laid bare in their passionate struggle to engage with their individual creativity.’ —Highlife
The Simplest Words
‘Most collections of this kind are interesting and useful reminders of the value of a writer of considerable literary standing. The Simplest Words is more powerful than that, because of Miller’s intense engagement with his subjects, and because Stephanie Miller has chosen pieces that speak to one another, accounting, in a way, for one of our most original, engagingly vehement and expansive writers.’ —Brenda Walker, Australian Book Review
‘This is a rich, generous compilation that enticingly refracts our perceptions of one of Australia’s finest novelists.’ —Peter Pierce, The Age
‘[Miller’s] writing has a luminous quality that sings off the page and whether he is writing on family, friendship, memory or just life, he engages with the reader, involving them in his orbit.’ —Helen Caples and Martin Stevenson, The Examiner
Coal Creek
‘Miller’s voice is never more pure or lovely than when he channels it through an instrument as artless as Bobby … The intelligence of the author haunts the novel, like an atmosphere.’ —Geordie Williamson, The Monthly
‘… a master of visceral description.’ —Weekend Australian
‘Because of this subdued mode of storytelling, the tension mounts gradually and when tragedy strikes it is truly, hideously, mesmerising … an evocative and moving novel of the Australian bush.’ —Books+Publishing
‘Coal Creek is a story of friendship, love, loyalty and the consequences of mistrust set against Miller’s exquisite depictions of the country of the Queensland highlands.’ —Books and Arts Daily
Autumn Laing
‘Such riches. All of Alex Miller’s wisdom and experience—of art, of women and what drives them, of writing, of men and their ambitions—and every mirage and undulation of the Australian landscape are here, transmuted into rare and radiant fiction. An indispensable novel.’ —Australian Book Review
‘… in many respects Miller’s best yet … a penetrating and moving examination of long-dead dreams and the ravages of growing old.’ —Times Literary Supplement
‘A beautiful book.’ —Irish Times
‘Miller’s prose is so simply wrought it almost disguises its sophistication … The result transforms one woman’s dying words into pure and living art.’ —Weekend Australian
‘… a magisterial work … a compulsively readable tale.’ —The Advertiser
‘Miller has invested this story of art and passion with his own touch of genius and it is, without question, a triumph of a novel.’ —Canberra Times
‘Miller engages so fully with his female characters that divisions between the sexes seem to melt away and all stand culpable, vulnerable, human on equal ground. Miller is also adept at taking abstract concepts—about art or society—and securing them in the convincing form of his complex, unpredictable characters and their vivid interior monologues.’ —The Monthly
‘Few writers have Miller’s ability to create tension of this depth out of old timbers such as guilt, jealousy, selfishness, betrayal, passion and vision. Autumn Laing is more than just beautifully crafted. It is inhabited by characters whose reality challenges our own.’ —The Age
‘Miller’s long honing of the craft of his fiction has never been seen to better advantage than in Autumn Laing.’ —Sydney Morning Herald
‘Nowhere in Miller’s work has the drama of character been so well synthesised with the drama of ideas. Nowhere else have his characters drunk ideas like wine and exhaled them li
Lovesong
‘With Lovesong, one of our finest novelists has written perhaps his finest book … Lovesong explores, with compassionate attentiveness, the essential solitariness of people. Miller’s prose is plain, lucid, yet full of plangent resonance.’ —The Age
‘Lovesong is a ravishing, psychologically compelling work from one of our best.’ —Courier-Mail
‘Miller’s brilliant, moving novel captures exactly that sense of a storybuilt life—wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, stirring and abysmal, a world in which both heaven and earth remain present, yet stubbornly out of reach.’ —Sunday Age
‘Lovesong is another triumph: lyrical, soothing and compelling. Miller enriches human fragility with literary beauty …’ —Newcastle Herald
‘Alex Miller’s novel Lovesong is a limpid and elegant study of the psychology of love and intimacy. The characterisation is captivating and the framing metafictional narrative skilfully constructed.’ —Australian Book Review
‘The intertwining stories are told with gentleness, some humour, some tragedy and much sweetness. Miller is that rare writer who engages the intellect and the emotions simultaneously, with a creeping effect.’ —Bookseller & Publisher
‘With exceptional skill, Miller records the ebb and flow of emotion … Lovesong is a poignant tale of infidelity; but it is more than that. It is a manifesto for the novel, a tribute to the human rite of fiction with the novelist officiating.’ —Australian Literary Review
Landscape of Farewell
‘The latest novel by the Australian master, so admired by other writers, and a work of subtle genius.’ —Sebastian Barry
‘Landscape of Farewell is a triumph.’ —Hilary McPhee
‘Alex Miller is a wonderful writer, one that Australia has been keeping secret from the rest of us for too long.’ —John Banville
‘As readers of his previous novels—The Ancestor Game, Prochownik’s Dream, Journey to the Stone Country—will know, Miller is keenly interested in inner lives. Landscape of Farewell continues his own quest, and in doing so, speaks to his reader at the deepest of levels. He juggles philosophical balls adroitly in prose pitched to an emotional perfection. Every action, every comma, is loaded with meaning. As one expects from the best fiction, the novel transforms the reader’s own inner life. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, it is only a matter of time before Miller wins a Nobel. No Australian has written at this pitch since Patrick White. Indeed, some critics are comparing him with Joseph Conrad.’ —Daily News, New Zealand
‘Landscape of Farewell has a rare level of wisdom and profundity. Few writers since Joseph Conrad have had so fine an appreciation of the equivocations of the individual conscience and their relationship to the long processes of history … [It is] a very human story, passionately told.’ —Australian Book Review
Prochownik’s Dream
‘Assured and intense … truly gripping … This is a thoroughly engrossing piece of writing about the process of making art, a revelatory transformation in fact.’ —Bookseller & Publisher
‘With this searing, honest and exhilarating study of the inner life of an artist, Alex Miller has created another masterpiece.’ —Good Reading
Journey to the Stone Country
‘The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me all the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for.’ —Tim Winton
‘A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line.’ —Nicholas Shakespeare, author of The Dancer Upstairs
Conditions of Faith
‘This is an amazing book. The reader can’t help but offer up a prayerful thank you: Thank you, God, that human beings still have the audacity to write like this.’ —Washington Post
‘I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year … a singular achievement.’ —Andrew Riemer, Australian Book Review
The Ancestor Game
‘A wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty.’ —Michael Ondaatje
‘For pure delight, abandon the maze, and read for sensual pleasure. This is a gift of floors of lacquered Baltic pine, pearwood shelves and tea boxes. There is the perfume of the camphor laurel trees, coats made of the pelts of 18 grey foxes, and Victoria Tang’s horse. Smell the porridge and sour pickles, cross the cold wet slate courtyard flagstones. Remember chrysanthemums the deep rust color of an old fox’s scalp.’ —Sara Sanderson, Indianapolis News
‘A major new novel of grand design and rich texture, a vast canvas of time and space, its gaze outward yet its vision intimate and intellectually abundant.’ —The Age
‘A dense, complex work that addresses the issues of cultural displacement, colonialism and the individual’s imaginative link to earlier generations … Extraordinary fictional portraits of China and Australia.’ —New York Times Book Review
‘One of the most engrossing books I’ve read in a long time.’ —Robert Dessaix
‘Takes the historical novel to new frontiers. It is fabulous in every sense of the word.’ —Commonwealth Writers Prize judges
The Sitters
‘Like Patrick White, Miller uses the painter to portray the ambivalence of art and the artist. In The Sitters is the brooding genius of light. Its presence is made manifest in Miller’s supple, painterly prose which layers words into textured moments.’ —Simon Hughes, Sunday Age
The Tivington Nott
‘The Tivington Nott abounds in symbols to stir the subconscious. It is a rich study of place, both elegant and urgent. An extraordinarily gripping novel.’ —Melbourne Times
Also by Alex Miller
Max
The Passage of Love
The Simplest Words
Coal Creek
Autumn Laing
Lovesong
Landscape of Farewell
Prochownik’s Dream
Journey to the Stone Country
Conditions of Faith
The Sitters
The Ancestor Game
The Tivington Nott
Watching the Climbers on the Mountain
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in 2022
Copyright © Alex Miller 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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ISBN 978 1 76106 657 3
eISBN 978 1 76118 552 6
Internal design by Bookhouse, Sydney
Set by Bookhouse, Sydney
Cover design: Sandy Cull, www.sandycull.com
Cover image: Harcourt Landscape, David Moore, 2022
for Stephanie
&
for my mother and her old people, the Egans of Ballyragget
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
Before she had a shower, and still in her dressing-gown, Fran sat on the edge of the bed and wrote in her diary. It was Wednesday. The middle of her first week back already. Since China she hadn’t been able to find her old enthusiasm for the job. And anyway, the new campus was haunted. She had the unsettling feeling of being unwelcome there. She didn’t believe in the paranormal and ghosts or anything like that, of course, but at the same time the place was creepy. She wrote: The sense of unease or even horror in a place where terrible things have happened is familiar to me. She had been meaning to make this note ever since she began working at the Sunbury campus, but for some reason she had never quite got around to doing it. It had nagged at her. Now it was done. It was on paper.
