“An actor’s prose” is not so much a genre as an irritating label that has no right to exist. However one tries to stick it on, that foolish label simply falls away from Millson’s Miller Rose Roberts.

The novella encompasses the life of a single woman, from childhood into adulthood. From the very first moment, the reader is surrounded by smells, objects and sounds — and we inhabit this world alongside little Rose. One might think the proper word is grow up, but no: we merely grow older. More on that later.

Alongside the heroine, the reader moves — glides — along the scale of her life as though along smooth, gleaming rails. It sounds rather lovely, but in truth this is, among other things, a story about the desperate sensation of one’s own passivity. The rails are so smooth that there is nothing to grasp, no possibility of stopping, and choice is a category that simply does not exist here. We may try to stop an aeroplane, certainly, but I would wager we will fail. In the world of Miller Rose Roberts, the possibility of choice seems not to exist. What does exist is the moral imperative of being honest with oneself.

Speaking of artistic method, of the language of the text: we do not see Miller; we see the world through Miller. Through her eyes, that is, entering her inner state from the very beginning, from the very first line. Millson’s talent as a writer allows him to find the words not merely to convey external circumstances, but to make us understand precisely how this girl sees her own jumper, or a jaunty advertisement at an empty petrol station — refracted through her despair, her fear and her composure.

A strange combination, is it not? And yet it only seems strange. This is why we do not grow up alongside Miller. Either she is already far too grown-up from the beginning, or she was forced to grow up in one terrible second at the age of seven — and never to mature inwardly again, as though she had spent, in that single instant, all the energy allotted to the task. Like a wondrous knight from a Pre-Raphaelite painting, this snub-nosed Miller walks on and on, a twilight glow flickering inside her whose meaning remains obscure even to herself. She passes through dramas and ordeals that appear impossible to survive. Yet this tiny Sir Galahad continues, walking alone through her life in search of her own Grail, guided by a faint, delicate ringing. The ringing is not a metaphor. It is an important motif running throughout the novella.

Every seven years, Miller hears the same sound: a thin, pure, sustained note. It changes everything, compelling her to change her life. Sometimes she cannot even say what has happened, and simply lives with this inner timer. The first time it sounds in the mind of Miller the child, there in her mother’s house, it draws her away from panic and forces her to save herself. It is a sound that urges, a sound that clarifies, a sound that invites. Perhaps it is quite literally the medical phenomenon of tinnitus; perhaps it is an angelic voice, the dulcedo described by the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages; perhaps it is a symptom of the heroine’s madness.

Is Miller mad? In all honesty, the medical diagnosis — even when doctors attempt to provide one — matters least of all within the narrative. It is merely one of the colours in Miller’s relationship with the world. Because the world does not hear her, or hears her only poorly, and the heroine searches, painfully, for a way to speak.

Every seven years, the sound seems to carry her onto another line of life, where she must construct her world anew. The seven-year cycle is an important theory in many schools of thought, from Gurdjieff to Steiner, and in Miller Rose Roberts this fundamental aspect of the heroine’s existence is woven so naturally into the story that it never feels like an abrupt intrusion of esotericism. It is part of the narrative. Seven years mark a crucial threshold: renewal, transformation. For Miller, hearing the Sound at the tender age of seven is provoked by tragedy — but perhaps it was predestined from the very beginning.

Loss, betrayal, the absence of love, death, passion — all of these seem to have been bestowed upon Miller far more lavishly than upon other people, and in quantities far beyond what she should be able to endure. Yet what saves her is her absolute purity, her openness and her dignity.

Remember that tiny Sir Galahad, walking down an empty street in the form of a seven-year-old girl, as though she had stepped out of every Pre-Raphaelite canvas at once? Only Galahad could sit in the Siege Perilous. And so Miller endures these dreadful events — events so ordinary, so recognisable, so true to life, and so terrifying.

Yes, there is only one person beside Miller who can support her. Yet he appears like a deus ex machina: helping her, holding her up, then retreating once more into the shadows — a man cast in the most romantic mould imaginable, the very image of the troubadour.

There is another motif that must be mentioned: Miller’s dreams and fantasies about her mother, whom she loves and longs for, yet also hates and fears to the point of death. That paralysing terror: there, there SHE is, moving behind the shower curtain. Dear God, how frightening — what is SHE like in there, what is wrong with HER, how terrifying…

It seems significant that the motif of utter despair, treated as an object of artistic reflection, is present both in Signs of Life and in Miller Rose Roberts. The motif of muteness — not necessarily physical, but emotional — and of not speaking to the world, because the world will not hear anyway: this is the path walked by Millson’s heroines. Age does not matter. Only life matters — and therefore honesty, openness and talent. Step aside from that path, and before you will stretch crooked, muffled, circuitous trails. And in Miller Rose Roberts, a way out will be found. For now, it is no more than a narrow path through a sombre forest, an almost invisible trail along which this snub-nosed Galahad moves towards her own Grail: the expression of herself through words.