Lovesong

An act of random circumstance takes Australian tourist John into a café in a suburb of Paris one day. That tiny twist of fate changes John’s life forever, as he falls for the Tunisian niece of the café owner and ends up staying for 16 years.

But Miller has not created a sickly sweet love story. John’s relationship with Sabiha becomes shaped by her overwhelming desire to have a child, something it conspires he cannot give her. Propelled to take matters into her own hands, Sabiha’s desperation brings about a tragedy.

There is something gentle and old-fashioned about Lovesong. A master of characterisation, Miller does not pack his novel with complex plot; rather, this is a tale that grows from his protagonists: the selfishly desperate Sabiha, the trustworthy, solid John, and a clutch of well-drawn minor characters. With fluid, beautiful prose he sketches their portraits as though they are figures from the past and he is reflecting on them with a melancholic eye.

In part, this reflective style is because Lovesong is a story within a story. John, now back living in his native Australia, tells what happened to him in Paris to a writer he befriends, Ken. Ken has sorrows of his own, yet becomes drawn to Sabiha and John by the opportunity their sadness presents. Beneath the gentle style of Miller’s book lies an insight into an author’s competitive hunger for a good story. Like Ken, we are hearing John’s tale for the first time, but are the words we are reading Ken’s or John’s?