Book review: Autumn Laing by Alex Miller

An old woman’s memories evoke an entire continent of art in an epic of Australia

AUTUMN LAING

by ALEX MILLER

Allen and Unwin, 452pp, £12.99

This book requires stamina for the first half until the intricate story gathers pace. After that, it takes on a different momentum as its various storylines come together. Keep with it.

Part of the reason for its slow start is that we are treated to the ramblings of Autumn Laing. She is an elderly, embittered, crotchety widow who is rude to her carers and anyone else who wants to help her. She is waiting to die at her home in Melbourne, if necessary by her own hand. First, though, she wants to finish writing her recollections of a wilful youth which destroyed her chances of having children, and of disloyalty to her long-suffering husband Arthur Laing with a younger man, Pat Donlon. The redeeming feature of her life is that, perhaps, she gave birth to a specifically Australian tradition in art.

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It’s already a complicated story but it is interwoven very cleverly with the birth pangs of a generation of migrants learning to live and grow in Australia and to grow up “untutored by the traditions of Europe”. Miller emigrated from the UK to Australia when he was 17 and clearly understands that country’s unease with its identity.

The group of friends around the Laings want to have their own style in art, writing and poetry. Pat Donlon is the one with the talent to create this authentic Australian approach in his painting but needs a mentor to give him confidence and purpose. Autumn Laing provides the motherly encouragement as well as the opportunity to betray Pat’s wife, Edith. The two storylines come together in the brief romantic relationship between Autumn and Pat.

The catalyst to face up to her past and to write it down is when, after a gap of 50 years, Autumn sees Edith, who left Pat after his first night with Autumn, in a local shop. She remembers that Edith’s ambitions to be a painter were always undervalued by her husband. Edith had given Autumn and Arthur one of her early works which now hangs on Autumn’s wall as a “window to my memory”.

Autumn met Pat, when he was brought to dinner by Arthur, solicitor and frustrated patron of the arts. Pat bemoaned his latest rejection by the Australian art establishment, which saw merit only in painting which reflected European style and traditions.

The search for an Australian identity not only brings the book’s various themes together but provides the reason Autumn took an interest in Pat.

That reason is a search which still goes on in Australia as later generations find it difficult to throw off the customs and standards they brought with them and adopt the identity of their new land. The challenge is to stop shadowing Europe.

Edith, the wronged wife, and her family are typical of the Melbourne middle class who try to recreate the elegance of the old country long after fashions have changed there. She believed that society “would require from her something of worth in return for the advantages of her birth”. She married out of her class and to a Catholic. All these old world affectations were alive and well and were the very standards people like Autumn and Pat wanted to reject. They would do that by trying to create a new artistic tradition peculiar to their new country.

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All these themes come together as Pat becomes “Autumn’s project” and lover. She wants to “acknowledge and make known his gift” and encourage him to reflect Australia in his painting. They go for a few days to a cottage in the outback in Queensland and there Pat’s art opens up to the wonders of his adopted country.

He begins a successful career which he owes entirely to Autumn, whom he rejects when he has had all he can get from her. For Autumn, that is tragedy. Pat is the child she never had and the lover she cannot keep. She gave birth to his talent but he returned to England as a reverse migrant.

Miller is much better known in his adopted country than here. If that changes, he might even follow in Dolan’s footsteps himself.

DOUGLAS OSLER

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