Life is a labyrinth, but you get there in the end

Amanda Lohrey, winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, on labyrinths and the value of the humanities.

“A study of our literature is a study of who we are.” Amanda Lohrey

Not one but two University of Tasmania alumni – Amanda Lohrey (BA Hons 1968) and Robbie Arnott (BA/BBus 2012) – made it onto this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist. It was an even greater cause for celebration for the University that Amanda won the much-coveted literary award.

“That was very special,” Amanda said. “Because of her, Miles Franklin, because of who she was. She was such an amazing character, a wonderful woman. Fearless.”

Winning The Miles Franklin Award is a dream for many Australian novelists, and it is arguably the literary award that is best known among the public. “It’s like the Brownlow Medal, it’s the one people know,” Amanda said from her home in North-East Tasmania.

“It has been around for a long time, and it has the name of a person attached to it. Many know who Miles Franklin was and have seen My Brilliant Career (the film based on the book of her life).”

Amanda won the award for her seventh novel, The Labyrinth (Text), and is the second Tasmanian to receive the award in its 64-year history, after two-time winner and alumnus, the late Christopher Koch (BA Hons 1954).

The novel was praised by the judges as “a beautifully written reflection on the conflicts between parents and children, men and women, and the value and purpose of creative work”.

The novel focuses on a woman, Erica Marsden, who moves to a small town on the south coast of New South Wales to be close to her son, who is in prison. When there, she sets about building a labyrinth, which becomes a community project.

“I got interested in the revival of building labyrinths around the world,” Amanda said. “They’ve been built in churches, public gardens, schools, farms. I thought, what is going on here? What’s the appeal of this?”

Amanda thinks it might be an aspect of the mindfulness movement and the growth of unorthodox forms of spiritual practice. The labyrinth is an archetype found in cultures around the world with some dating back 5000 years. “There are labyrinths on the walls of Neolithic caves,” she said.

“It’s like a pattern embedded in our DNA.”

Amanda describes a labyrinth as ‘a meandering path’. “You double back on yourself, but you get there in the end. You’re secure in a labyrinth, you can let go, you don’t have to puzzle your way out of it. It’s not a maze.”

Amanda Lohrey. Photo: Richard Bugg

Amanda, who also won the Patrick White Award for literature in 2021, reflects fondly on her time at the University of Tasmania and her Arts degree.

“When I was at UTAS, the professors and heads of department in the humanities taught first-year undergraduates,” she said.

Amanda is a strong advocate for the humanities at universities, and in particular Australian literature.

“A study of our national literature is a study of who we are. It’s not about being literary or highbrow. It’s about our identity as a nation, how it has formed and the stories we’ve told each other and how they have changed over time.”

Novels are a co-creation between writer and reader, according to Amanda, with readers bringing a great deal of themselves to their reading. Some have commented that The Labyrinth is about making things, an idea she expands on: “Art is intrinsically therapeutic, anything from crochet to landscape.”

And returning to the theme of labyrinths, the labyrinth in Amanda’s award-winning novel is poignantly left unfinished. “No work of art is ever finished,” she said. “A labyrinth is like any work of art; it’s a living project, like life itself.”

Katherine Johnson