Praise for Lovesong
"It is wonderful, as all your work, full of wisdom and compassion." —Anne Michaels, Orange Prize-winning author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault
"The usual remark to be made about novels that rely on simplicity to generate their effects is that such clarity is deceptive. But with an author such as Miller - whose prose reads clear as running water, and whose insights into the ethics of storytelling, the sadness of ageing and the motions of the heart are laid out with such directness - perhaps simplicity really is the aim and the end. It is the intricate yet enduring mechanism of a successful marriage that is truly complex; Miller's fiction is the pellucid medium through which that complexity gleams." —Geordie Williamson, The Monthly
"Lovesong explores, with compassionate attentiveness, the essential solitariness of people. Miller's prose is plain, lucid, yet full of plangent resonance. Sabiha thinks, with John in mind, that 'the man has no companion for his soul ... He is always discontent', but she too feels lonely and incomplete for much of her life, until the almost miraculous advent of her daughter. With Lovesong, one of our finest novelists has written perhaps his finest book. Unlike his narrator Ken, Miller gives no sense that this is a farewell, rather than a new beginning." —Peter Pierce, The Age
"Alex Miller returns to the realms of romance and desire, longing and solitariness, transience and creativity in his new deep, yet playful novel Lovesong; sure to appeal widely through its astute charm and emotional essence ... You could read it as a statement about fiction itself - derived from truths of the self, of people known and met, your own and others' lives; but also from burning curiosity (the spark for the story being the sadness in Sabiha's eyes). 'My life is in my books', notes Ken towards the end, an admission that the reader is free to interpret the work of the writer as coming from their own secret inner life. The intertwining stories are told with gentleness, some humour, some tragedy and much sweetness. Miller is that rare writer who engages the intellect and the emotions simultaneously, with a creeping effect." —Australian Bookseller & Publisher
"Lovesong is indeed about love and longing, infidelity and infidelity. It shows how love in a box has always been good for novels and making love in a box (as you will see) even better. It is an exploration into feelings so deep they touch primordial nerves. With its vigorous undercurrents of melodrama, its tides of sentiment, it certainly approaches the condition of song, perhaps of opera. At its core is one darkly gorgeous woman's inner music, her private pain. It is no ordinary love story but, in a most rewarding way, it is a conventional novel, a genre traditionally rooted in the struggle between desire and constraint ... Lovesong is a poignant tale of infidelity; but it is more than that. It is a manifesto for the novel, a tribute to the human rite of fiction with the novelist officiating." —Stella Clarke, The Australian Literary Review
"Miller's brilliant, moving novel captures exactly that sense of a storybuilt life - wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, stirring and abysmal, a world in which both heaven and earth remain present, yet stubbornly out of reach." —Guy Rundle, Sunday Age
"Alex Miller's beautiful Lovesong is anything but a simple love story ... Lovesong is a ravishing, psychologically compelling work from one of our best." —Courier Mail
"As John's story unfolds, so does Ken's desire to take it and refashion it. Lovesong is a beautiful novel, very different to Miller's last four books. In some ways it is reminiscent of Conditions of Faith, which also had French and Tunisian connections, but it is not only the absolutely gripping story of Sabiha and John that makes this book so interesting, but the experience of the ageing writer, who is sucked back into telling a story. Lovesong confirms my view that Miller is one of Australia's best and most interesting writers." —readings.com.au
"It takes a very good writer indeed to get away with a title such as Lovesong, and Alex Miller does it triumphantly. His story is at once exotic and homely, telling of the sweetness of love and the sometimes awful cost of it to those caught up in its toils." —John Banville, The Age
"This is a vintage performance ... [Miller] writes with uncanny insight about women and with loving detachment about men." —Morag Fraser, Sydney Morning Herald
"A magical tale ... A classical shape and tenor, like a de Maupassant tale fleshed out. And an interesting ending, making the author so deeply complicitous. A little flick like a master calligrapher makes when they lift the brush after a perfect, single stroke." —David Brooks
Praise for Alex Miller's previous books
Landscape of Farewell
"The latest novel by the Australian master, so admired by other writers, and a work of subtle genius." —Sebastian Barry
"Landscape of Farewell is a triumph."— Hilary McPhee
"Alex Miller is a wonderful writer, one that Australia has been keeping secret from the rest of us for too long." —John Banville
"What a glorious fictional achievement this is... The greatest works of art, like the greatest friendships, are vulnerable human creations, but ones that are all the more meaningful and beautiful, paradoxically, when they confront the darkness and understand it, finally as a gift whose spirit can be received only when we face up to the darkness and find within it the deepest source of beauty and light. When an artist does this as masterfully as Miller does in this novel, the achievement itself, the novel itself, functions as a gift as well, as all great art does. The proper response can only be gratitude." —Ronald Sharp, Australian Literary Review
"Landscape of Farewell has a rare level of wisdom and profundity. Few writers since Joseph Conrad have had so fine an appreciation of the equivocations of the individual conscience and their relationship to the long processes of history... [It is] a very human story, passionately told." —Australian Book Review
"The prose is at times like organ music: deep, rounded, sonorous, occasionally ecstatic; Miller's eye for detail, especially of landscape, is as sharp as a yellow robin's." —Angela Bennie, The Sydney Morning Herald
"Miller's novel is dense with images and ideas. It is clear he is eminently skilled in giving fictional space to the complex issues of trauma, guilt, massacre and reconciliation... Miller can not be faulted for his willingness to bring complex issues out through the work of the imagination. That he does this with such skill is to be celebrated." —Sue Bond, The Courier-Mail
"A writer to treasure... profound." —Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin
"This is a novel of ideas in which the particularity of characters, places and events is not subordinated to their symbolic significance... they are so vividly described that they remain in the memory... This is a memorable novel." —Eureka Street
"By the end of the novel, we are glad to have known its numerous characters, all of them suffering from notions of failure and loss which, each in their own way, they partially overcome."—Tom Aitken, Times Literary Supplement
"As one expects from the best fiction, the novel transforms the reader's own inner life. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, it is only a matter of time before Miller wins a Nobel."—Daily News, New Zealand
Conditions of Faith
"This is an amazing book. The reader can't help but offer up a prayerful thank you: Thank you, God, that human beings still have the audacity to write like this." —Washington Post
"I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year... a singular achievement." —Andrew Riemer
"A truly significant addition to our literature." —The Australian
"My private acid test of a literary work is whether, having read it, it lingers in my mind afterward. Conditions of Faith fulfils that criterion; I am still thinking about Emily." —Colleen McCulloch
Journey to the Stone Country
"The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me all the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for." —Tim Winton
"A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line." —Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Secrets of the Sea and In Tasmania
"Miller's fiction has a mystifying power that is always far more that the sum of its parts... his footsteps — softly, deftly, steadily — take you places you may not have been, and their sound resonates for a long time." —Andrea Stretton, The Sydney Morning Herald
Prochownik's Dream
"With this searing, honest and exhilarating study of the
inner life of an artist, Alex Miller has created another
masterpiece."—Good Reading
"Prochownik's Dream is an absorbing and satisfying novel,
distinguished by Miller's enviable ability to evoke the
appearance and texture of paintings in the often unyielding
medium of words."—Andrew Riemer, The Sydney Morning Herald
The Ancestor Game
"A wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty."—Michael Ondaatje
The Tivington Nott
"The Tivington Nott abounds in symbols to stir the subconscious. It is a rich study of place, both elegant and urgent."—The Age
"An extraordinarily gripping novel."—Melbourne Times
"Altogether brilliant. This man knows his hunting country."—Somerset County Gazette
"In a virtuoso exhibition, Miller’s control never once falters."—Canberra Times