image of person or book cover 1123451657520723764.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon The Octopus and I single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 The Octopus and I
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Lucy and Jem live on the Tasman Peninsula near Eaglehawk Neck, where Lucy is recovering from major surgery. As she tries to navigate her new body through the world, she develops a deep fascination with the local octopuses, and in doing so finds herself drawn towards the friendship of an old woman and her son. As the story unfolds, the octopuses come to shape Lucy's body and her sense of self in ways even she can't quite understand.

'The Octopus and I is a stunning debut novel that explores the wild, beating heart at the intersection of human and animal, love and loss, fear and hope.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 1123451657520723764.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 360p.
      Note/s:
      • Published April 2020.
      ISBN: 9781760875640
Alternative title: L'octopus et moi
Language: French
    • Paris,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Dalva ,
      2021 .
      image of person or book cover 6436789479768151839.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 400p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 6 May 2021.
      ISBN: 9782492596001

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Dyslexic edition.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

How Hobart Achieved the Title of UNESCO City of Literature, and What It Means for Tasmanian Writers Stephanie Eslake , 2023 single work column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , November 2023;

'In her critically acclaimed debut novel The Octopus and I (2020), Tasmanian author Erin Hortle relished the beauty of the waters surrounding Hobart.'

Breast Augmentation and Artificial Insemination: Monstrous Medicine and the Female Body in Recent Fiction Amber Moffat , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture , vol. 11 no. 1-2 2022; (p. 163-177)

'Recent fiction that depicts medical intervention upon the female body as monstrous reveals societal anxiety around aesthetic and reproductive medicine. As biotechnology rapidly advances, the female body continues to be a site on which improvements, efficiencies and controls are imposed. While Kristeva’s abject and Creed’s ‘monstrous-feminine’ explain the capacity of the female body to imbue horror, this literary analysis explores how the experience of the medicalized female body can convey anxiety relating to escalating aesthetic and reproductive demands. Works of fiction by Kawakami, Mazza, Hortle, Booth, Giddings, Gildfind and Taylor are considered in terms of medicine and the female body, with the narratives revealing common themes of monstrosity. Bakhtin’s grotesque and Kristeva’s abject informs the analysis, as does Foucault’s concept of the ‘medical gaze’. Bartky’s ‘fashion-beauty complex’ frames the investigation into depictions of cosmetic surgery, while the impact of capitalism is considered in relation to reproductive technologies and medical experimentation. The power structures that medicine operates within are considered and the article argues that the representation of medicine as monstrous in relation to the female body expresses collective unease about the increasingly unstable boundaries of the human body itself.' (Publication abstract)

Animal Perspective : Breaking the Language Barrier Laura Jean McKay (presenter), Erin Hortle (presenter), Chris Flynn (presenter), 2021 single work interview
— Appears in: Griffith Review , January no. 71 2021;
What I’m Reading Donna Mazza , 2020 single work
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020;
Our Octopuses, Ourselves Georgia White , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , September 2020;

'There are many qualities to the octopus that render it strange, or weird, to a human mind: its cold, slippery body. Its excess of creepy tentacles. Its dissonant, almost chimerical structure. Its aloof intelligence. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, science fiction and horror writers fixed upon the figure of the octopus as the ultimate expression of eldritch dread. Cthulhu sprouted from the hallucinatory imagination of HP Lovecraft, and attacks by giant cephalopods became a staple of the maritime adventure novel. In an essay on the teratology of Weird horror, novelist and literary critic China Mièville links the historical emergence of the genre, around about the fin-de-siècle, to a growing sense of nihilism in the face of an oncoming crisis. To the writers of the Weird, writes Mièville, this formless being with an inexplicable surfeit of limbs was a reflection of the  ‘chaotic, amoral, [and] anthropoperipheral universe’ they found themselves in.' (Introduction)

Erin Hortle : The Octopus and I Fiona Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 18-24 April 2020;

— Review of The Octopus and I Erin Hortle , 2020 single work novel

'The Octopus and I opens with a short chapter in the voice of an octopus, heavily pregnant, attempting to cross the isthmus at Eaglehawk Neck, near Port Arthur. “My body is brimming is pulsing is purring is ready,” the octopus narrates, “… the moonlight envelops me caressing my arms as they caress the kelpy floor the kelpy shore.” This is a gesture that sets up the book’s thematic and stylistic concerns: the novel is largely about the interconnections between the animal and human worlds, and the ethical problems that our relationships with different kinds of life forms often elide. Animals – the octopus, a mutton bird, a pair of seals – are important characters here, and while Erin Hortle’s attempts to enter their subjectivity aren’t always this successful, they provide a continual counterbalance to the dramas played out in the human characters’ lives. The book is very much a work of ecological fiction, a genre that is becoming increasingly common in Australian literature, and in which octopuses – because of their intelligence and strangeness – frequently occur.'  (Introduction)

Tough Decisions Amid the Tentacles of Friction Rohan Wilson , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 20 June 2020; (p. 14)

— Review of The Octopus and I Erin Hortle , 2020 single work novel
Quarantine Q&A : Erin Hortle 2020 2020 single work interview
— Appears in: Feminist Writers Festival 2016-;
Our Octopuses, Ourselves Georgia White , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , September 2020;

'There are many qualities to the octopus that render it strange, or weird, to a human mind: its cold, slippery body. Its excess of creepy tentacles. Its dissonant, almost chimerical structure. Its aloof intelligence. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, science fiction and horror writers fixed upon the figure of the octopus as the ultimate expression of eldritch dread. Cthulhu sprouted from the hallucinatory imagination of HP Lovecraft, and attacks by giant cephalopods became a staple of the maritime adventure novel. In an essay on the teratology of Weird horror, novelist and literary critic China Mièville links the historical emergence of the genre, around about the fin-de-siècle, to a growing sense of nihilism in the face of an oncoming crisis. To the writers of the Weird, writes Mièville, this formless being with an inexplicable surfeit of limbs was a reflection of the  ‘chaotic, amoral, [and] anthropoperipheral universe’ they found themselves in.' (Introduction)

Animal Perspective : Breaking the Language Barrier Laura Jean McKay (presenter), Erin Hortle (presenter), Chris Flynn (presenter), 2021 single work interview
— Appears in: Griffith Review , January no. 71 2021;
What I’m Reading Donna Mazza , 2020 single work
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020;
Breast Augmentation and Artificial Insemination: Monstrous Medicine and the Female Body in Recent Fiction Amber Moffat , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture , vol. 11 no. 1-2 2022; (p. 163-177)

'Recent fiction that depicts medical intervention upon the female body as monstrous reveals societal anxiety around aesthetic and reproductive medicine. As biotechnology rapidly advances, the female body continues to be a site on which improvements, efficiencies and controls are imposed. While Kristeva’s abject and Creed’s ‘monstrous-feminine’ explain the capacity of the female body to imbue horror, this literary analysis explores how the experience of the medicalized female body can convey anxiety relating to escalating aesthetic and reproductive demands. Works of fiction by Kawakami, Mazza, Hortle, Booth, Giddings, Gildfind and Taylor are considered in terms of medicine and the female body, with the narratives revealing common themes of monstrosity. Bakhtin’s grotesque and Kristeva’s abject informs the analysis, as does Foucault’s concept of the ‘medical gaze’. Bartky’s ‘fashion-beauty complex’ frames the investigation into depictions of cosmetic surgery, while the impact of capitalism is considered in relation to reproductive technologies and medical experimentation. The power structures that medicine operates within are considered and the article argues that the representation of medicine as monstrous in relation to the female body expresses collective unease about the increasingly unstable boundaries of the human body itself.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 5 Apr 2022 14:56:36
Settings:
  • Tasman Peninsula, Forestier Peninsula - Tasman Peninsula area, Southeast Tasmania, Tasmania,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X