The Children's Bach Author:Helen Garner 'He sat at the ravaged table and — watched the girl dry, herself with — efficient strokes, sawing between her — toes and twisting her shoulders to — reach the back of her thighs. This was — the modem world then, this seamless — logic, this silent tit-for-tat. This is what — people did. He did not like it, He hated — it. But he was in its moral universe
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now, and he could never go back.'
Athena and Dexter lead a happy,
family life~ sheltered from the tackier
aspects of the modern world and
bound by duty towards a disturbed
child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough
nut from Dexter's past~ and those she
brings with her. In the ensuing upheaval Athena sees a way out: it leads
into a world whose casual egotism she has dreamed of without being able to