Empty Hiss

HELEN GARNER’S FICTION has a Philip problem. We’re first introduced to him in Monkey Grip (1977) as a “hesitant and slightly nonplussed” guitar-toting hippie hovering in the novel’s background. He comes into sharper focus in her follow-up, The Children’s Bach (1984), having evolved into a feckless musician who proves irresistible to Athena, the housewife at the novel’s center. Philip, Garner writes, offers her “a world where people could act on whims, where deeds could detach themselves cleanly from all notion of consequences.” Athena runs off with him, only to realize that such an amoral world might not be very hospitable to her. “I can’t help you with that one,” Philip tells Athena when her husband comes to retrieve her. “You’ll have to handle that one on your own, I’m afraid.”