The Children's Bach: The perfect jewel of a family novel

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. Drawn on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, The Children's Bach is a beloved work that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.