FROM THE PUBLISHER

From one of Australia's most revered contemporary authors comes the romantic saga of Emily Stanton and her restless struggle against the conventions of her time.

When Alex Miller's mother died several years ago, she left him the fragmentary journal she'd kept while living briefly in Paris as a young woman in the 1920's. Inspired by this surprising entr￯﾿ﾽe into his mother's emotional life and her conflicted passions of young womanhood, Miller has written Conditions of Faith. In spare, precise prose, Miller brings us into vivid 1920's Australia, France, and Tunisia and gives us a taste of feminism at the beginning of the century through the story of Emily Stanton. Like Henry James's Isabel Archer before her, Emily is beautiful and headstrong, restless, idealistic, and determined to live a fulfilling life despite smothering social conventions.

It's 1923 and at age 25 Emily, an Australian, impulsively marries Georges Elder, a French-Scottish engineer ten years her senior. Suddenly she is propelled from Melbourne, where she is a promising scholar of classical civilizations, to Georges's small, conventional flat in Paris. Quickly dismayed at the traditional life she has married into, Emily resolves to look elsewhere for the exotic adventure and intellectual stimulation she believes to be her due. She will "live a Parisian fairy story," she determines, which suits her until it leads to an illicit liaison and unwanted pregnancy, altering her life irrevocably. At the center of the book is "the problem of a reason for living," a problem which society says should be solved, for women, by motherhood. For Emily, though, it's not sufficient. Her search for fulfillment will take her as far as the ruins of Carthage and ultimately challenge society's most deeply cherished beliefs about motherhood and family. Conditions of Faith is at once a provocative romance and an elegant meditation on a timeless dilemma.

FROM THE CRITICS

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

A "disjointed but touching" story of an intelligent, ambitious young woman whose "pained" struggle for personal freedom challenges society's deeply cherished beliefs about motherhood and family. "Tiring" to read, "slowly plotted, and a big disappointment" -- that more wasn't done with such good material. On the plus side, "great scenery."

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 novel--one capturing the disconcerting blend of familiarity and formality between husband and wife, for instance--will 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. Agent, Arnold Goodman. (July) FYI: In 1993, Miller received both the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Miller supposedly based this first novel on his mother's journal, a distinctly unfilial act that has produced a fine book. Spirited and beautiful Emily finds marriage and impending motherhood insufficient for her fulfillment. However, 1920s France, rigid in its views of gender roles, frowns on her attempt at serious scholarship. Then, even more than now, a woman could not have it all; it was assumed that if she had a serious career and children, one must receive less than its due. For Emily, her life's work is in Tunisia, uncovering the history of a young Berber woman executed by the Romans in the second century A.D. However, her husband's future is in Australia. Emily's decision regarding which life to surrender is abundantly painful and beautifully rendered (a number of subplots involving questions of paternity, place, and faith keep the reader involved). Consider for all fiction collections, especially those where readers are interested in women's studies.--Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

School Library Journal

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 novel--one capturing the disconcerting blend of familiarity and formality between husband and wife, for instance--will 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. Agent, Arnold Goodman. (July) FYI: In 1993, Miller received both the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Carolyn See

"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_. No paraphrase can do justice to this novel. Conditions of Faith is a blessing. To put it another way, Alex Miller has hit the quinella."Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

It's surprising to read a book about a woman written by a man that works, but this one does. I take my hat off to the author, and note with interest that his heroine consumes Madame Bovary, another male—authored tour de force about a woman. My private acid test of a literary work is whether, having read it, it lingers in my mind afterward. Conditions of Faith fulfills that criterion; I am still thinking about Emily. Very sad, very thought—provoking. Congratulations, Alix Miller.
 — Colleen McCullough