Lovesong

Lovesong

by Alex Miller (Author)

Synopsis

Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small, rundown Tunisian cafe on Paris's distant fringes run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, a love story starts to unfold. John and Sabiha's becomes a contented but unlikely marriage-a marriage of two cultures lived in a third-and yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in train an irrevocable course of tragic events. Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened to them in Paris seems like a distant, troubling dream to John. He confides the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholic writer who sees in his neighbours the possibility of one last simple love story. Told with Miller's distinctive clarity, intelligence and compassion, Lovesong is a pitch-perfect novel, a tender and enthralling story about the intimate lives of ordinary people. Like the truly great novelist he is, Miller locates the heart of his story in the moral frailties and secret passions of his all-too-human characters.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 01 Jul 2011

ISBN 10: 1742376339
ISBN 13: 9781742376332
Book Overview: The masterful Australian novelist turns his hand to the most universal of subjects: love. 'It takes a very good writer indeed to get away with a title such as Lovesong, and Alex Miller does it triumphantly.' - John Banville

Media Reviews
[Lovesong] is wonderful, as is all [Miller's] work, full of wisdom and compassion. -- Anne Michaels, Orange Prize-winning author of FUGITIVE PIECES and THE WINTER VAULT
Miller reveals most clearly the delicacy of his understanding of human nature...[a] tactful and intelligent writer. * Guardian *
Miller's latest, and with luck, not final work not only beguiles as a wry, tender tale but will also remind his admirers, and alert his new readers to, how dauntingly gifted he is at taking an image and shaping a story. * Irish Times *
Lovesong is an unusually warm, humane, emotionally true novel that slips its way into your mind and fosters a deep empathy and care for its characters. * Eastern Daily Press *
Author Bio
Alex Miller has twice won the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's premier literary prize; the first occasion in 1993 for The Ancestor Game, and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, for The Ancestor Game, in 1993. He lives in Victoria.