Description
Athena and Dexter Fox are happy.
They love each other.
They are friends.
They live with their young sons in a sparsely furnished house near the Merri Creek: its walls cracking, its floors sloping and its doors hanging loosely in their frames.
There is a piano in their kitchen.
But then, one day – years after their lives have taken different directions – Dexter runs into Elizabeth, an old friend from his university days.
She brings into his world her loose-living musician boyfriend, Philip, and her seventeen-year-old sister, Vicki.
And all at once, the bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray.
Helen Garner’s perfectly formed novels embody Melbourne’s tumultuous 1970s and 1980s.
A W&N Essential.
‘A jewel of a novel about a perfect family falling apart’ – David Nicholls
‘The Children’s Bach is Garner’s masterpiece’ – Public Books
‘A perfect novel. I was so stunned that I wanted to run around the block’ – Rumaan Alam
