April09_2
Amanda Lohrey taught writing at UTS; she might even have taught me. The careful construction and extended metaphors I remember from university writing courses are there in 'The Philosophers Doll', beautifully rendered, of course, but even so. I rushed the first quarter of this novel to see if it would relax, and it did. The book is about an unplanned pregnancy, in a marriage between a social worker and a philosopher. There's a painful, slow progression of misunderstandings and foolish decisions and stupid silences with my mental commentary running: 'just tell him now ', 'just explain it properly for heaven's sake'. Then there's a structural flipflop, the narrative voice changes, the time frame shifts, and the last third of the book is teriffic.