Amanda Lohrey
Author of The Labyrinth
About the Author
Amanda Lohrey is the author of A Short History of Richard Kline which made the Queensland Literary Awards 2015 shortlist in the fiction category. This same title was shortlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize for best book by a Tasmanian writer 2015. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Black Inc.
Works by Amanda Lohrey
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1947-04-13
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Tasmania
University of Cambridge - Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
essayist - Awards and honors
- Patrick White Award (2012)
Miles Franklin Award (2021) - Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Places of residence
- Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- Associated Place (for map)
- Australia
Members
Reviews
Luke and Anna are a couple in their thirties who live in Sydney. Fed up with the high cost and the competition among their friends and acquaintances as to who leads the best lifestyle, they decide to move to the country. They acquire an old house in a tiny coastal hamlet. The bush lies only a few steps behind their house and it is hard to settle into their new routines, which is full of new experiences and also hardships.
The atmosphere of this story is tense and somewhat bleak. Although the show more descriptions of the natural world are beautiful, it is not possible to fully enjoy them because of the underlying sense of dread. The narrator is detached and thus it is hard to really get to know the main characters or to feel for them. Another character that appears is a strange boy and in the beginning it is not clear who he is. To be honest, I could have done without this element.
However, I was still fascinated by the novella and especially by the author's way with words and how she portrays the relationship of Luke and Anna with sparse words, yet in such a deep way.
There is a lot of imagery as well. Sometimes it feels a little forced, especially when it comes to the birds, but all in all it serves to make the story more meaningful. I needed more time to read this novella than I'd usually need for 87 pages because I read slowly and reread many passages so I wouldn't miss anything and take everything in. show less
The atmosphere of this story is tense and somewhat bleak. Although the show more descriptions of the natural world are beautiful, it is not possible to fully enjoy them because of the underlying sense of dread. The narrator is detached and thus it is hard to really get to know the main characters or to feel for them. Another character that appears is a strange boy and in the beginning it is not clear who he is. To be honest, I could have done without this element.
However, I was still fascinated by the novella and especially by the author's way with words and how she portrays the relationship of Luke and Anna with sparse words, yet in such a deep way.
There is a lot of imagery as well. Sometimes it feels a little forced, especially when it comes to the birds, but all in all it serves to make the story more meaningful. I needed more time to read this novella than I'd usually need for 87 pages because I read slowly and reread many passages so I wouldn't miss anything and take everything in. show less
Ah, I do love a clever title. A conversion can refer to a religious conversion, a change of heart about something or someone, or property conversion where a building is repurposed into something else. Amanda Lohrey's sparkling new novel The Conversion plays with all of these, but begins with the repurposing of a church.
As the novel starts Zoe and her husband Nick have been sideswiped by the financial crash. It bleeds money out of their assets, and they are going to have to sell their show more handsome Federation villa they had worked on with such loving care. Nick, ever the optimist, turns this disaster into an opportunity to reinvent themselves. They have become stale and complacent, he says, an established middle-class couple trundling along in their comfortable cocoon, tut-tutting at the television and taking expensive holidays. But they can start over, he says. He can set up a part-time practice as a psychologist, and she won't need to return to her work as a solicitor.
As Nick bombards Zoe with his proposal to sell up in Sydney and move to one of those charming little towns that in recent years were being revitalised, the power dynamic in this marriage is revealed. He's sixty-three but she still fancies him, and over the course of a long marriage she has learned to expect that his enthusiasms would wane, soon to be replaced by something else. For his part, he can count on her inertia and her inability to come up with an alternative solution to their straitened circumstances, to get his own way despite her doubts.
Nick is not only oh-so-persuasive, he is also sly. Something that Zoe has yet to learn about him. When they make their way to the countryside to view a church as a potential home, it takes a while for her to realise that this trip is not just the impulse he had implied.
The setting is recognisable as the Hunter Valley, home to coal mines and vineyards and tourism. Not too far from Sydney, it's gentrifying as the nation's economy de-carbonises and the coal industry has to adjust.
And then, before anything has been resolved, Nick dies — in circumstances that reveal his feet of clay.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/22/the-conversion-2023-by-amanda-lohrey/ show less
As the novel starts Zoe and her husband Nick have been sideswiped by the financial crash. It bleeds money out of their assets, and they are going to have to sell their show more handsome Federation villa they had worked on with such loving care. Nick, ever the optimist, turns this disaster into an opportunity to reinvent themselves. They have become stale and complacent, he says, an established middle-class couple trundling along in their comfortable cocoon, tut-tutting at the television and taking expensive holidays. But they can start over, he says. He can set up a part-time practice as a psychologist, and she won't need to return to her work as a solicitor.
Nick has always been about the possibility of the new. The world was there to be remade, over and over, and anything less was stagnation. If friends began to talk earnestly about their family tree, as they seemed increasingly to do as they aged, he would look at Zoe and roll his eyes. He had little interest in history and above all he despised nostalgia: nostalgia was a form of weakness, emotional and spiritual laziness. The secret of life was to live in a dynamic present illuminated by the light of the possible. (p.11)
As Nick bombards Zoe with his proposal to sell up in Sydney and move to one of those charming little towns that in recent years were being revitalised, the power dynamic in this marriage is revealed. He's sixty-three but she still fancies him, and over the course of a long marriage she has learned to expect that his enthusiasms would wane, soon to be replaced by something else. For his part, he can count on her inertia and her inability to come up with an alternative solution to their straitened circumstances, to get his own way despite her doubts.
Nick is not only oh-so-persuasive, he is also sly. Something that Zoe has yet to learn about him. When they make their way to the countryside to view a church as a potential home, it takes a while for her to realise that this trip is not just the impulse he had implied.
The setting is recognisable as the Hunter Valley, home to coal mines and vineyards and tourism. Not too far from Sydney, it's gentrifying as the nation's economy de-carbonises and the coal industry has to adjust.
And then, before anything has been resolved, Nick dies — in circumstances that reveal his feet of clay.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/22/the-conversion-2023-by-amanda-lohrey/ show less
This book a gift from my daughter and what a difference a good-sized font makes. I read it in two sittings. To be more specific, I consumed it, and now that I’ve just finished, I’m not sure what to say about it. There’s something entirely familiar, almost common place about the northern rivers setting and the beautifully drawn characters of which the main character, the author, is so recognisable as to feel like someone I know quite well or at least have met.
It’s not that much show more happens in the book or that there are revelations. The big actions happen outside the book. Perhaps that’s why it’s subtitled ‘A Pastoral’.
It brings to mind Eliot’s line,
Which is perhaps another way of stating the epigraph
It’s not that much show more happens in the book or that there are revelations. The big actions happen outside the book. Perhaps that’s why it’s subtitled ‘A Pastoral’.
It brings to mind Eliot’s line,
and so I rejoice upon having to construct something upon which to rejoice.
Which is perhaps another way of stating the epigraph
The care for many ills, noted Jung, is to build something.show less
In her fascinating new novel, Amanda Lohrey returns to the (fictional) small coastal town of Garra Nalla which featured in her novella Vertigo (2008, see my thoughts here). But unlike Vertigo's young couple swapping high house prices in Sydney for what they think is a pastoral idyll, the central character in The Labyrinth is Erica, an older woman, alone and very troubled. Although less naïve than Luke and Anna in Vertigo, Erica shares their belief that the environment significantly affects show more well-being and this yearning for a salve to her misery seems to be all she has at this time. She has settled in Garra Nalla to be near her only child, Daniel, who is in prison, but she hopes that the small community will not connect her with him because his crime weighs very heavily on her.
My understanding of what this might mean has been influenced by Margaret Merrilees excellent debut novel The First Week (Wakefield Press, 2013) which explored the confusion, denial, blame, guilt and horror of a parent whose child has committed a grievous crime. Erica, however, has moved beyond the initial distraught reaction and is trying to reestablish some equilibrium in her life while also trying to help her son whose mental health is a grave concern. With no plans to renovate, she buys a rustic old shack built with reclaimed materials on the coastal edge, in marked contrast to the soul-destroying environment of the prison:
But Erica's coastal retreat is no Eden. There are vandals and louts on the beach, and she plants wattles to screen out an annoying neighbour. Plagued by horrific dreams, she begins the task of following her son's command to burn his books.
She makes a small ceremony of this, just doing one book a day, and like all booklovers, I know why. Our books are a mirror of our lives and a window into our souls. Burning Daniel's books is like annihilating him. Later, when she employs Lexie, a young girl at a loose end who needs to save up the money to make her escape to Sydney (because there is no work for young people in Garra Nalla), she elongates the time for this task by having Lexie sort the books into alphabetical order. Lexie is a slow and dreamy worker, but even so, there must be hundreds of these books to be unpacked from the boxes because Lexie is only up to the letter M by the time the novel ends...
Time, like different kinds of madness, is a recurring motif in the novel.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/09/13/the-labyrinth-by-amanda-lohrey/ show less
My understanding of what this might mean has been influenced by Margaret Merrilees excellent debut novel The First Week (Wakefield Press, 2013) which explored the confusion, denial, blame, guilt and horror of a parent whose child has committed a grievous crime. Erica, however, has moved beyond the initial distraught reaction and is trying to reestablish some equilibrium in her life while also trying to help her son whose mental health is a grave concern. With no plans to renovate, she buys a rustic old shack built with reclaimed materials on the coastal edge, in marked contrast to the soul-destroying environment of the prison:
The metallic walls of the prison glint above the frost-covered fields. Along the denuded mining ridge of the hills the wind turbines stand like elegant guards, their blades becalmed in the harsh light. (p. 26)
The walls of the visitors' room are a violent mustard yellow, On one wall there is a huge mural of crudely drawn trees and boulders in shades of muddy orange and greenish brown. It has the quality of sludge. Two warders escort me to a steel table, bolted to the floor, and I sit on a steel chair, also bolted to the floor. Everything here is steel and concrete; even the air has a metallic taste. (p.27)
But Erica's coastal retreat is no Eden. There are vandals and louts on the beach, and she plants wattles to screen out an annoying neighbour. Plagued by horrific dreams, she begins the task of following her son's command to burn his books.
She makes a small ceremony of this, just doing one book a day, and like all booklovers, I know why. Our books are a mirror of our lives and a window into our souls. Burning Daniel's books is like annihilating him. Later, when she employs Lexie, a young girl at a loose end who needs to save up the money to make her escape to Sydney (because there is no work for young people in Garra Nalla), she elongates the time for this task by having Lexie sort the books into alphabetical order. Lexie is a slow and dreamy worker, but even so, there must be hundreds of these books to be unpacked from the boxes because Lexie is only up to the letter M by the time the novel ends...
Time, like different kinds of madness, is a recurring motif in the novel.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/09/13/the-labyrinth-by-amanda-lohrey/ show less
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