Athena and Dexter lead an enclosed family life, innocent of fashion and bound towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a world whose casual egotism they had barely dreamed of. How can they get home again? (Source: publisher's website)
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 11 (Literature Unit 2). Year 11 has been chosen as the focus for this unit because it deals with significant themes demanding some maturity with a strong focus on literary technique and analysis appropriate to Year 11.
Themes
aspirations, autism, disability, domesticity, family, infidelity, isolation, marriage, music, relationships
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Intercultural understanding, Literacy
The Children's Bach : An Opera in Two Acts
Andrew Schultz
(composer),
2007
Grosvenor Place
:
Australian Music Centre
,
2008
Z1425242
2007
single work
musical theatre
'With the republication of “The Children’s Bach,” a 1984 novel, and “This House of Grief,” a 2014 account of a murder trial, the Australian writer Helen Garner is ripe for discovery by American readers.'
'I had never heard of the Australian writer Helen Garner when I started reading her novel “The Children’s Bach,” and the book puzzled me at first, before I got into the scatty, nonlinear rhythm of its prose. We are immediately introduced to a cluster of characters: Dexter; his wife, Athena; their two little boys, one of them developmentally disabled; the adult sisters Elizabeth and Vicki; Elizabeth’s lover Philip and his adolescent daughter, Poppy. How, I wondered, were the characters connected to one another, and why did Garner’s sentences seem to float through the air like random thoughts?' (Introduction)
'This chapter considers Helen Garners fiction, assessing the evolution of her work from the scandalous diary-like immediacy of the Monkey Grip (1977) through to her minimalist masterpiece The Children’s Bach (1984). Throughout, it considers the house as a core spatial configuration that changes across Garner’s work.' (Publication abstract)
Live Recording : Helen Garner on Her Early Career
Chloe Hooper
(interviewer),
2019
23469032
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Helen Garner talks with Chloe Hooper about her early career and the impact of Monkey Grip and The Children’s Bach on her writing life. This is a live recording from our event.' (Production summary)
