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Reworking the narrative

A critical study of Amanda Lohrey’s writing
by
September 2022, no. 446

Lohrey by Julieanne Lamond

The Miegunyah Press, $29.99 pb, 173 pp

Reworking the narrative

A critical study of Amanda Lohrey’s writing
by
September 2022, no. 446

The Labyrinth begins with a woman walking through her childhood home – a decommissioned asylum. In middle age she moves to a run-down house by a wild and dangerous sea, where she notes her vivid and prophetic dreams. The house is convenient because she needs to be close to her son, an imprisoned artist. She befriends a stonemason who offers to carve her a gargoyle (which she refuses). Together they design and build her version of a labyrinth, a prayer or meditation path most famously realised in the great medieval cathedral of Chartres, although Lohrey’s antipodean labyrinth is not a homage to the Chartres labyrinth, or an imitation.

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