Lovesong

Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small, rundown Tunisian cafe on Paris’ distant fringes. Run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha, the cafe offers a home away from home for the North African immigrant workers toiling at the great abattoirs of Vaugiraud. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, the quiet simplicity of their lives is changed forever.

John is like no one Sabiha has met before—his calm grey eyes promise her a future she was not even aware she wanted. Theirs becomes a contented but unlikely marriage, yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in motion an irrevocable course of tragic events.

Lovesong is a simple enough story in many ways—the story of a marriage, of people coming undone by desire, of ordinary lives and death, love and struggle—but when told with Miller’s distinctive voice, with its intelligence, clarity and compassion, it has a real gravitas and is deeply moving.