Autumn Laing

Berkelouw Review

It's 1938 and Pat Donlon is filled with the conviction that he can paint in a wholly new and Australian way. He is contemptuous of local art schools, newly married, extremely poor and ready to risk rejection he asks an art patron for money. Humiliated he finds himself in the office of Arthur Laing, a keen art lover, who takes him home to meet his wife Autumn. When Arthur and Autumn visit Pat and his wife Edith, the strong attraction between Autumn and Pat fuses into an affair. Autumn's life is enmeshed with Donlon's and he becomes one of the circle inhabiting the Laing household.

Our narrator for this story is the elderly Autumn Liang who, in 1991, is writing a journal account of the relationship. The journal also renders her current life - incapacitated, angry and bearing a lifetime of guilt for the effect of her affair on her husband and Donlon's wife Edith.

Autumn portrays Arthur as hurt, silently clinging to his marriage, his feelings displaced onto his beloved Pontiac that develops rattles audible to his ears alone. She is less certain of the impact of her affair on Edith.

Near the end of the book Alex Miller allows us a brief Edith-eye-view against which to assess Autumn's story. Not content with this, an additional perspective is given in the form of an Editor's Note. As in Lovesong where Miller nested several stories inside one another, in Autumn Liang he has given us a number of angles from which to consider Autumn's self-reporting.

It is fine work. The writing is richly patterned with powerful images and beautiful metaphors always deployed purposefully. The people, period and situations are sharply evoked. Sometimes I find Miller's work so beautifully polished that is it almost too complete and I feel that, as a reader, I have no work to do! But this is a silly complaint - you should read this wonderful book.