Cirrus@Austlit

'Amanda Lohrey is a bold and idiosyncratic writer. Her novels chronicle the forces that shape intimate and social experience in the contemporary world, taking seriously the difficult decisions of daily life: what food to cat; how to relate to others; where to live; what structure family should take; how to make a living. She presents these matters in a style that is calm, restrained, lean, and at the same time open to mystery and the unknown. Lohrey's fiction makes coherent what might seem contradictory: a sharp political interest coupled with strong empathy for personal circumstance; an interest in the material world and also in the metaphysical realm; a sense of curiosity and poetic richness that never gives the impression of getting carried away. '  (Introduction)
 

In Lohrey's third novel Camille's Bread, Stephen is obsessed with Japanese forms of traditional medicine in the form of Zen shiatsu and macrobiotics. In The Project of the Self under Late Capitalism, an essay published in Overland in 2001, Lohrey argues that we would do better to see interests such as Stephen's as of an exercise in mindless narcissism and more about the individual's attempts to find a sphere of freedom and agency ... in response to experiences of powerlessness and worthlessness under regimes of economic rationalism:  Lohrey's novels reflect on what happens to people's utopian impulses in the face of increasing barriers to meaningful engagement in politics. They trace a shift from a 195os water-front in which communal identity is deeply entwined with politics to a disillusionment with public life and a commensurate turn of attention inwards, towards the self and the body, from the 198os onwards.' (Introduction)
 

'Early in the writing of this book I went to see a film called Free Solo. It is about a remarkable feat of human courage and strength: a man climbing the goo-metre high rock face, El Capitan, without ropes or harness. The film looks at the psychology of Alex Honnold, the man who could do some-thing that would seem, to most people, utterly terrifying. He is single minded to such an extent that he comes across as comic. He starts a relationship with a woman while they are filming: 'I don't mind having her in the van, he says of his new girlfriend. 'She's pretty; she doesn't take up too much space.' His climbing  friends discuss the risks of entering into a relationship when attempting such a difficult goal.  Would his concern for her impact his capacity to carry it out? I tried not to guffaw when he referred to himself as a warrior.  Facing down and ignoring danger. Here I thought is a kind of masculinity that 'gets the job done.' It prides itself on its lack of encumbrance. Solitude. There is no concern for the minutiae of life: he eats his dinner with the spatula he used to cook it. Such embodiment of masculinity enables a focus so intense that a man can balance his body on a tiny foothold  800 metres in the air while he switches his grip between one thumb and the other. And in doing so, he achieves an act of the the most extreme self-reliance and, arguably, pride: doing the most dangerous thing without dying.' 

 (Introduction)

 

 

Much of the Great Dividing Range that runs across Eastern Australia was burning while I wrote this book. In Canberra our days were punctuated with the anxious checking of air quality and emergency services apps. Amanda Lohrey is a writer who speaks to these times: her work is concerned with the relationship between people and the communities and environments they live with. More specifically, she writes about our apprehension of crisis and its proximity. Lohrey's novels use the motif of fire to engage with ethical and political questions about how individuals feel, and take, responsibility for others, especially in relation to environmental crisis. Fire acts both as symbol and plot device in Lohrey's novels and stories; it is a real crisis that is also a metaphor for catastrophe more generally. This is especially the case in The Reading Group (1988) and Vertigo: A Pastoral (2008). Two decades separate the publication of these novels, and formally they are extremely different, yet they show the continuation of a series of ideas about the relationship between personal and political conflagrations: how private life is impacted by political events, and how it can also be understood through the lens of large-scale crisis such as fire.' (Introduction)
 

'Scenes of reading are everywhere in Lohrey's fiction, which throughout questions what reading does to and for us. Her work explores its frustrations, disappointments, limits, and trans-formative potential. In her novels books are set by well-meaning reading groups, picked up by chance in second-hand shops or coffee tables, inherited by unwilling daughters and sons. They are hidden under the bed, stolen by ASIO, burned as instructed. And they are read for reasons ranging from duty, political education, information, boredom, desperation,  meaning, and guidance. Lohrey's interest in reading is concrete:  not only are we told that her characters are reading, why and where. In this way her work is deeply intertextual. We read over the shoulders of Lohrey's characters, with excerpts of the books they are reading. Lohrey's readers are prompted to realise the process taking place while they are encountering her work: the act of reading, we are reminded, is a singular moment in which a work takes on specific meanings for each reader.  It is both intensely private and a site of connection with other readers, writers and potential selves.' (Publication summary)
 

'Tasmania's Parliament House is a graceful Georgian sandstone building facing the Hobart waterfront. It is here, on the steps of the parliament, that Amanda Lohrey suggested we meet for the interview, so that I could see at firsthand the docks and backstreets of the waterfront that constituted the setting of her first novel, The Morality of Gentlemen. Lohrey has a frank, straightforward manner and a penetrating gaze. There is a steadiness about her, as though others can flap about all they like and she'll wait until they have finished. She has a remarkable voice, deep and sonorous, which holds a calm authority but is very ready to register a wry humour. The first interview was conducted outdoors in October 2018, as Lohrey showed me around the adjacent historic suburb of Battery Point where she spent her early childhood. The interview was recorded on my phone as we walked up and down hilly, narrow streets that are now thoroughly gentrified. The inter-view continued in a cafe in Salamanca Place and continued over email across the subsequent two years. We began, in the streets of Battery Point, by talking about money, real estate, and Lohrey's childhood.' (Introduction)