The Miles Franklin winner’s plot teeters on the edge of profound silliness, but it’s also a vehicle for making meaning of our lived experiences – and those of others
An authorial disclaimer leads Amanda Lohrey’s exhilarating new novel, Capture: “What follows is in the nature of a fable and is in no way intended to portray actual psychiatric research or therapeutic practice.”
The novel is narrated by Dr James Mather – Jim – a psychiatrist in his 60s who has reluctantly taken on a research project that requires him to study “experiencers”, people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Jim is a diligent narrator, a “trained observer” alert to gestures of self-betrayal and sly subtexts, at least in others. Why, this narrator might ask, is the reader being warned against taking things too literally?