image of person or book cover 409375959571535080.jpg
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y separately published work icon Vertigo : A Pastoral single work   novella  
Issue Details: First known date: 2008... 2008 Vertigo : A Pastoral
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Luke and Anna decide on a sea-change. They leave the city, fleeing a past and a future that fill them with fear. On the coast they discover a natural world that is both destructive and rejuvenating. Events sweep them up and they must confront what they have tried to put behind them.' (Publisher's blurb)

Teaching Resources

Teaching Resources

This work has teaching resources.

Publisher's website also has  English Fiction Text for English NSW HSC 2015-2020 available to download. (https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/vertigo)

Notes

  • In an interview with Jane Sullivan (Age, 15 November 2008), Amanda Lohrey explains that she 'thought it would be interesting to do a modern version' of Lawson's short story 'The Bush-Fire' and his poem 'The Fire at Ross's Farm'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Black Inc. , 2008 .
      image of person or book cover 409375959571535080.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 140, [4]p.p.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • On title page: With images by Lorraine Biggs.
      ISBN: 9781863953191 (hbk.)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Black Inc. , 2009 .
      image of person or book cover 3607493562706010652.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 160p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 30 April 2009

      ISBN: 9781863954303

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

Fire Julieanne Lamond , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: Lohrey 2022; (p. 88-118)
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)
 
Reading Crisis : The Politics of Fire in Amanda Lohrey’s The Reading Group and Vertigo Julieanne Lamond , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , July vol. 65 no. 1 2020; (p. 156-170)
'When parliament returned from its break during what we are now calling the 'Black Summer' of 2019-20, Prime Minister Scott Morrison rose to give a condolence speech for the victims of the fires. As leaders often do during a crisis, he reached for language that was grand, grave, even poetic, in his description of the catastrophic fires that continued to burn across south-eastern Australia as he spoke.' (Introduction)
‘A Body in Time’ : Reading and Writing Australian Literature Belinda Castles , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019;
'In the press, a lament for the study of Australian literature is often coupled with mistrust at the popularity of creative programs. It can be disconcerting for writers and teachers of writing in Australia, who work in a practical as well as pedagogical sense in the field of Australian literature, to be placed in an antithetical position to it. One response to the narrative of the decline of Australian literature in universities has been an assertion of its ‘embeddedness’ across the curriculum. The creative writing classroom is one place in which it can reliably be found, and the act of reading for the purpose of writing brings a distinctive charge to the study of Australian literature, produced by a movement across modal peripheries. This essay argues, via a ‘body in time’ (Jose 2011) model of Australian literature, and a reading of the novella Vertigo by Amanda Lohrey (2009), that the key elements of process and proximity in this mode of reading make a distinctive contribution to the study of Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)
Bushfires are Burning Bright in Australian Letters and Life Grace Moore , 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 11 February 2015;
y separately published work icon Amanda Lohrey's Vertigo : Study Notes for Common Module Bruce Pattinson , Seven Hills : Five Senses Education , 2015 15374686 2015 single work criticism
'Down Had Been Falling' Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 305 2008; (p. 27)

— Review of Vertigo : A Pastoral Amanda Lohrey , 2008 single work novella
[Review] Vertigo Paula Grunseit , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , September vol. 88 no. 3 2008; (p. 32)

— Review of Vertigo : A Pastoral Amanda Lohrey , 2008 single work novella
Another Point of View Katharine England , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 15 November 2008; (p. 12)

— Review of Vertigo : A Pastoral Amanda Lohrey , 2008 single work novella
Cover Notes Lucy Sussex , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 23 November 2008; (p. 35)

— Review of Vertigo : A Pastoral Amanda Lohrey , 2008 single work novella
Writer Charts New Territory Christopher Bantick , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 22 - 23 November 2008; (p. 21)

— Review of Vertigo : A Pastoral Amanda Lohrey , 2008 single work novella
The Fire of Fiction Jane Sullivan , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 15 November 2008; (p. 24-25) The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 November 2008; (p. 30-31)
Amanda Lohrey's Vertigo : An Australian Pastoral Ruth Blair , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 30 June vol. 30 no. 2 2015;

'This essay is grounded in William Empson’s view of the pastoral tradition as deeply concerned with social relations – with how we live in the world and with each other – and in the conviction that the pastoral is again appearing as an enabling mode of expression, especially in the midst of the issues of our time that surround human relationships with the non-human world. Amanda Lohrey’s Vertigo: A Pastoral is a work of refined artistry shaped by a genre that continues to be capable of acting in our imaginative life as a powerful mode of storytelling. Much has been written in recent times, particularly in the context of Australian literature, about the idea of an ‘anti-pastoral’, and Terry Gifford’s term ‘post-pastoral’ is applied to the adaptation of the tradition to contemporary environmental concerns. While these are significant lines of thought, I want to argue that they risk preventing us from seeing the deeply rooted value of basic strategies of traditional pastoral. Lohrey’s novella points to ways in which pastoral can usefully be seen as a continuing and adaptable set of ideas. It illustrates, too, the particular energies that are generated when, as Paul Alpers argues in his discussion of pastoral narration, ‘pastoral usages and modes of representation are affected by appearing in prose fiction’ (324).'

Source: Abstract.

y separately published work icon Amanda Lohrey's Vertigo : Study Notes for Common Module Bruce Pattinson , Seven Hills : Five Senses Education , 2015 15374686 2015 single work criticism
‘A Body in Time’ : Reading and Writing Australian Literature Belinda Castles , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019;
'In the press, a lament for the study of Australian literature is often coupled with mistrust at the popularity of creative programs. It can be disconcerting for writers and teachers of writing in Australia, who work in a practical as well as pedagogical sense in the field of Australian literature, to be placed in an antithetical position to it. One response to the narrative of the decline of Australian literature in universities has been an assertion of its ‘embeddedness’ across the curriculum. The creative writing classroom is one place in which it can reliably be found, and the act of reading for the purpose of writing brings a distinctive charge to the study of Australian literature, produced by a movement across modal peripheries. This essay argues, via a ‘body in time’ (Jose 2011) model of Australian literature, and a reading of the novella Vertigo by Amanda Lohrey (2009), that the key elements of process and proximity in this mode of reading make a distinctive contribution to the study of Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)
Reading Crisis : The Politics of Fire in Amanda Lohrey’s The Reading Group and Vertigo Julieanne Lamond , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , July vol. 65 no. 1 2020; (p. 156-170)
'When parliament returned from its break during what we are now calling the 'Black Summer' of 2019-20, Prime Minister Scott Morrison rose to give a condolence speech for the victims of the fires. As leaders often do during a crisis, he reached for language that was grand, grave, even poetic, in his description of the catastrophic fires that continued to burn across south-eastern Australia as he spoke.' (Introduction)
Last amended 17 Jun 2020 13:13:56
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