Conditions of Faith
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
With university behind her, Emily Stanton finds herself on the threshold of life. Introduced to a Scottish engineer, the exoticism of his life in Paris beckons, and she leaves her family home in twenties Melbourne to become his wife. But far from providing answers, her conventional marriage awakens in her an ardent desire to find a reason for living beyond that of simply wife and mother, a desire that leads her to flirt with risk, passion and unorthodox friendships, and carries her to Tunisia on a journey of self-questioning and intellectual reawakening.
Through the lives of a rich cast of characters, Conditions of Faith compassionately and subtly explores the problem of a reason for living. This is the timeless theme of the heart of this beautiful and compelling novel.
'Utterly absorbing and deeply rewarding both emotionally and intellectually.' - James Bradley
'This is an amazing book. The reader can't help but offer up a prayerful thank you... that human beings still have the audacity to write like this... No paraphrase can do justice to this novel. Conditions of Faith is a blessing.' - Carolyn See, Washington Post
'I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year... a singular achievement.' - Andrew Riemer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carefully researched yet curiously flat, Miller's (The Ancestor Game) fifth novel follows a young Australian woman as she attempts to find her place in the world in the early 1920s. The daughter of a professor at Melbourne University, Emily Stanton has just graduated from that institution with a First in the history of classical civilizations. Though her father feels she has potential as a scholar and urges her to go on to study at Cambridge, Emily marries Georges Elder, a Scotsman who grew up in Chartres, works as an engineer in Paris and has come to Australia to plan a bridge for Sydney Harbor . Returning with her husband to Paris, Emily is disillusioned with her new life, and a visit to Chartres to meet Georges's widowed mother, the formidably stout and pious Madame Elder, and his Aunt Juliette, only exacerbates her feeling that she has entered a stiffling environment. An erotic encounter with a priest in the cathedral further confuses Emily. Soon after, Emily's health begins to fail, and Georges sends her to Tunisia to recover. There she meets working archeologists and her interest in history, particularly in the Christian-claimed martyr Perpetua, is rekindled, an intellectual need that will eventually be pitted against Emily's role as wife and mother. Although Miller meticulously reconstructs Paris, Chartres and a Tunisian village in the early '20s, his thorough and indiscriminate attention to detail and his sometimes wooden prose make the novel slow going. A few striking scenes later in the novelDone capturing the disconcerting blend of familiarity and formality between husband and wife, for instanceDwill reward the patient reader. Miller's characters, however, are broadly sketched and lack convincing interior lives. Despite the novel's careful construction, his tale never acquires vitality. FYI: In 1993, Miller received both the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
