FALLING in love is the easy bit. It is what comes after that gets complicated.
In this tender and exquisitely told story we watch a couple fall in love and then struggle to maintain the intensity.
Lovesong, by Alex Miller. Allen & Unwin, rrp $39.99
Miller in a masterful way gently takes us to a Tunisian cafe, Chez Dom in Paris.
There we meet Sabiha, the niece of the proprietor, Houria.
Into this cafe comes the Australian stranger, John Patterner.
He is smitten with Sabiha and she too finds his presence strangely insistent.
Becoming lovers, we share their intimacy and their hot and hasty declarations of undying love.
We also sense that this cannot last.
Into this idyllic sense of love unfolding, the pace changes and the focus shifts to the hunger Sabiha has for a child and what lengths she will go to ensure she falls pregnant.
Without giving too much away, this has an immediate impact on how she relates to John.
It is not as we would expect.
The novel, while initially being a love story, offers Miller opportunities to reflect on the essential differences of men and women and more to the point, how pregnancy changes a woman.
He writes: "But the woman who is a mother has a companion for her soul. Man is singular and always remains so."
This is book club and discussion territory.
Lovesong is a deeply moving and uplifting book.
Miller is unambiguous in saying that love, real, passionate enduring love, is not simple or easy to negotiate.
The tragedy is that being in love may not in itself be enough.
