in the earlier works "it offered, like sex or drugs, a way of immersion or escape". However, in The Children's Bach "it is associated with most of the characters ... and it generally suggests sanity and harmony. While Philip uses music to exploit people, it is a mark of Athena's unglamorous dedication to making life work, and of Dexter's uncomplicated gusto." Music The book contains many references to music, both popular and classical. The title itself refers to The Children's Bach, a collection edited by Australian music educator E. Harold Davies. The collection consists of 20 simple Bach pieces for piano, selected mostly from the Clavier-Book for Anna Magdalena. Critical reception While Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip (1977), met with a mixed reception in Australia initially, The Children's Bach was instantly better received and reviewed; Goldsworthy writes that it was "met with almost universal critical approval". In 1986, Australian academic and critic, Don Anderson, wrote that "There are four perfect short novels in the English language. They are, in chronological order, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Garner's The Children's Bach." In 1985, Melbourne critic Peter Craven wrote in Meanjin that The Children's Bach is "light years from any sparkling tell-it-all naturalism. It is concentrated realism of extraordinary formal polish and the amount of tonal variation which it gets from its seemingly simple plot is multifoliate to the point of being awesome". After its first publication in 1984, it was published by Penguin Books in 1996 and again in 2008. It was re-published in October 2018 by Text Publishing, containing a foreword by Ben Lerner which states: "The efficiency and precision of Garner's descriptions allows her to accomplish in a sentence what for other writers would require pages of exposition, ruining the effect". Adaptations In 2008 a chamber opera, based on the book and also titled The Children's Bach, was premiered at the Merlyn Theatre in Melbourne. It was composed by the Australian composer Andrew Schultz to a libretto by Glenn Perry. Awards and nominations 1986: South Australian Premier's Awards References Australian novellas 1984 Australian novels Novels by Helen Garner 1984 in Australia Novels set in Melbourne Novels adapted into operas