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)