Chapter 1

The opening chapter of Amanda Lohrey’s novella Vertigo focusses on Luke and Anna’s life in the city apartment. Lohrey’s descriptions of a cramped and damp apartment are congruent with the pastoral style, with the city lifestyle painted as bleak and uncomfortable. Anna is suffering emotionally and physically. Luke notices this and cannot stand to see Anna ‘deflated and diminished’, void of her previous athletic glow. Demonstrative of his interest in birds, Luke becomes curious about a bird noise that is difficult to hear above the ‘urban jazz’ and which nobody can readily identify – not even his long-time city dwelling parents. Prompted by the unnatural, unhealthy lifestyle of the city and rising interest rates, Luke raises the possibility of moving to the coast to get away from the city; a sea change. Anna agrees and the search for the idyllic location commences.

Alongside the literal search for the perfect location is a sense of internal reflection in the characters, a search for something more. This internal search is rewarded with the inclusion on the trips of ‘the boy’, whose appearance, as he curiously looks around, simultaneously provides Luke and Anna with a sense of hope and a degree of mystery. It will be revealed that the boy is a figment of the couple’s dreams and imagination, a mystical shadow of the child the couple lost seven months into their pregnancy. However in chapter one the reality of this boy is left to the reader’s own interpretation.

A perfect location is found. An area not frequented by tourists, a place with very few residents and lots of natural beauty, the town of Garra Nalla seems to Luke and Anna to be a place where ‘… they could live, and simply be’. After obtaining financial assistance from their parents the couple move into the house and quickly settle into a new routine, a reworking of their former life albeit a slower more natural pace. Spacious, light-filled areas replace their former work stations of an area in a warehouse and a room overlooking a fire escape. Their soft, city hands soon become calloused from working the soil. A canoe is purchased to take trips across the lagoon. All these activities seem to excite and attract the boy’s participation, a positive sign that they are on track.

However there is still some underlying discontent, the unspoken story of the boy. Luke gazes at the sea, lost in thought, and Anna gazes at CNN news, watching the world they have supposedly left behind. Luke appears to settle first, his keen interest in birdwatching taking his mind off the move. He finds a treasure trove of books including Sir Frederick Teves’ The Land that is Desolate: an account of a tour in Palestine. The memoir will mirror the couple’s own search for a ‘Promised Land’ and show that, in some ways, relocation is not the absolute answer, a shift in attitude and experience may also be necessary.

Chapter 1 Quotes

There are birds in the city, but in the city you rarely notice them; there is too much urban jazz in the air: the drone of jets roaring in, the manic whine of sirens or the thumping bass line of a neighbour’s latest dance. Chapter 1

…tourists gave it a wide berth. Perfect, they thought; just perfect. (Luke and Anna about Garra Nalla) Chapter 1

Here they could live, and simply be. (Luke and Anna about Garra Nalla) Chapter 1

It worries her that in the country, where men are expected to do much of their own maintenance and repairs, he will not be able to keep up with the demands of their run-down property. (Anna about Luke) Chapter 1

In the city they had a small balcony off their apartment, but it wasn’t the same. You looked out to a smoggy curtain across the built-up sky or down a long drop to the bitumen road below. You were not earthed. Chapter 1

Instead he just stares into its eyes, and the weird thing is this: the bird stares back. It looks right at him, and in that moment of looking a current passes between them, a soundless exchange of energy. (Luke) Chapter 1

Seeing the bird, he tells Anna, is more important than the naming of it. It’s like the boy, he reflects; they’ve never named the boy, and it doesn’t matter, indeed it’s better that way. (Luke)

Often he reads in bed while Anna, the night-owl, trawls through the cable news networks with their blaring live footage that can sometimes get on his nerves. (Luke) Chapter 1

Now, here in Garra Nalla, she has BBC and CNN: they make her feel connected to the outside world. (Anna) Chapter 1

Even Nature itself disappoints him, and his description of the biblical landscape is unremittingly bleak. ‘The Promised Land has been for centuries ravaged by war and torn by internal dissension. It has been plundered and laid waste.’ (Sir Frederick Teves from The land that is Desolate book) Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The middle of three chapters deals with Luke and Anna’s new life on the Garra Nalla estate. Now the natural elements are a prime focus. Whereas in the city where life was lived and the elements were nothing more than scenery, here in the rural setting natural elements such as water and wind play a prominent role in shaping the characters’ lives and emotions.

Prominently, there is a lack of water juxtaposing the apartment which had so much damp there was a mould problem. The drought persists and steps need to be taken to ensure the availability of vital drinking water. There is the relentless and annoying wind, which can ‘bluster for weeks at a time’ and which starts to infuriate Anna. On top of this, Anna has an encounter with a snake. Eventually she questions if they have made the right move; the initial honeymoon period is over. While the new environment had alleviated some pressures on their life, it had replaced them with others.

The pressure mounts and the couple take a break in the city to look after a friend’s house. Luke returns to the property ahead of Anna who spends a few more days in the city. There is some tension as the couple settle into the new life at different rates. After a short time Anna misses the rural life again and commits to returning for at least a year.

The couple befriend the local Watts family. A typical coastal family that appear to only have a wardrobe of shorts and thongs. The Watts family emblematises the coastal life. They are comfortable under the sun, they are in tune with the natural environment, even looking at ways of harnessing natural energy to power their house. Alan Watts and Luke become fast friends but Alan’s energetic and vibrant nature leaves Luke feeling ‘that he is no longer spirited, juiced-up; he no longer has that youthful sheen, that cocky invincibility’.

Added to the couple’s friends list is Gil, one of the older locals. Gil is friendly from the moment Luke and Anna arrive in town, holding the view that ‘all things must change’ and that sea changers bring a positive energy to Garra Nalla. Gil and Luke pair up to make repairs and explore the new surroundings. Anna’s isolation is seen as she perceives the boy as siding with Luke. The unmentioned dissatisfaction from Anna’s perspective and the unspoken hurt from her separation from the city is driving a wedge between the couple. Communication, vital to the human condition, has eroded and left the relationship vulnerable. Gil holds a secret that his son is serving in Afghanistan but he never mentions it in the superstitious belief that this will ensure all goes well. This approach is not unlike the couple’s own coping mechanism, demonstrating how the indominable human spirit will conjure ways to overcome trials.

Chapter 2 Quotes

AND SO THEY SETTLE IN, and it seems they have everything they need; everything, that is, except water. Chapter 2

He perceives that he is no longer spirited, not in the juiced-up way that these guys are; that he no longer has their youthful sheen, a kind of cocky invincibility. (Luke) Chapter 2

‘He’s like a brigadier who’s lost his battalion.’ (Marg about Ken, Luke’s father) Chapter 2

‘And how is she recovering from …’ He pauses, trying to find the words, ‘… from that other business?’ (Ken, Luke’s father, to Luke about Anna) Chapter 2

My God, he can’t even name it, thinks Luke in a spasm of bitter scorn. Typical. His father never could deal with the messy human dimension of feeling. Chapter 2

But the rain doesn’t come. Nature is out of whack, thinks Anna; even the birds can’t read the signs. Chapter 2

In the city the weather is just a backdrop to your day, a painted canvas against which you enact the plot of your life. In the country the weather is the plot. Chapter 2

At last that honest surgeon has arrived in Jerusalem itself: the goal of his pilgrimage, the very heart of his faith. But even here, as elsewhere, he experiences profound disappointment. (Luke reading about the author Sir Frederick Treves) Chapter 2

‘Bette thinks he’s superstitious. You know, if he doesn’t dwell on it, then nothing will happen to the boy.’ (Alan to Luke about Gil and his son in Afghanistan) Chapter 2

Now she belongs in neither place, like some migratory bird that has lost its bearings. (Anna) Chapter 2

‘Some Australian species respond to fire as others do to rain,’ she reads, and the casuarina is one of them. ‘There are instances of species, thought extinct, that fire freed from a near-fatal dormancy.’ (Anna reading about she-oaks) Chapter 2

In the weeks that follow Anna begins to resent her husband. Chapter 2

At any moment they could disappear from this place and nothing would change, nothing of consequence, so vast is the land and so small are they. And the thought of this brings on a rush of vertigo, a dizzying sense of disorientation, as if she is about to fall, but that when she falls she will be weightless. She has lost her roots, her anchorage to the earth; she might float away into the blue of the sky and never be heard from again. (Anna) Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The third and final chapter of Amanda Lohrey’s Vertigo depicts a small community in the face of great danger. Like the unspoken nature of the existence of the boy, smoke appears foreshadowing something ominous. The couple’s growing anxiety, and to a lesser extent that of the community who believes the fire ‘never comes this close to the coast’, breaks with the realisation that a real threat has presented itself. In preparation, Luke and Anna secure the house. The electricity is out and the pumps will not deliver any more water. This small detail highlights that even in the rural life they have chosen, there is still a reliance on electricity.

The community gathers to watch the approaching fire and are initially relieved to see the wind turn and drive the fire into its own path. However the fire has come on another front and blindsided them. The unexpected turn, like the death of Luke and Anna’s unborn child, positions the couple as looking to move on without confronting the real event. It will be the heart of the fire that refines them and shows that they have not fully seen the impact of the boy in their lives. However like the she-oaks that ‘respond to fire as others do to rain’, they will use the tragedy as an impetus to finally move on.

The couple return to the house, showing how much it already means to them. As the firestorm approaches they are rescued by a fire truck and delivered to the safety of the headland. The Watts family are in the water and it is revealed later, that even in the face of fire, they were desperate to not be swept away in the rising tide. Nature has little mercy despite its apparent tranquillity.

After the fire has passed, the couple find their home is one of only three still standing. They discover that an ember had entered on the house, falling onto Luke’s woollen sweater which had laid on the bed. The wool had smouldered but eventually hindered the spread of the flame. Symbolically this blue ribbed sweater was the one Luke had worn on the day he and Anna had scattered their stillborn child’s ashes at sea. He had discarded it when selecting warm clothing during the evacuation because the painful memories seemed too heavy for this fearful event.

Luke’s long walk in a landscape stripped bare of distraction and the dead bird on the doorstep prompt him to face the underlying grief he has been carrying. He breaks down in an emotional state and Anna, who has never seen him cry, realises they having been sharing an equal amount of grief. The realisation sets them free, and in one last imagination Anna sees the boy ‘dissolving into the light’ as he leaves their lives. Anna discards her contraceptive pills indicating she is willing to try again to have a family with Luke. They meet the Watts family and Gil and start to rebuild the small community.

Chapter 3 Quotes

And they stand at the window for a long time, because of the queer beauty of it, and because of how enthralling it is to watch a whole mountain range burn. (Luke and Anna) Chapter 3

Will Sir Frederick find the meaningful consolation for his daughter’s death that has so far eluded him, some revelation at the heart of the Holy Land. Chapter 3

So intent have they been on the fire on the southern beach that in the near darkness they have paid no heed to their rear. Chapter 3

Luke takes out his heaviest sweater, an old favourite in thick navy-blue rib, but after contemplating it for a few seconds tosses it onto the bed. Chapter 3

Around her neck is a plastic bag with her back-up CDs that she had fastened to her wool sweater before she ran from the house. (Anna) Chapter 3

Near the door is a dead bird, singed along both wings; it must have plummeted down the chimney and flapped its way across the floor. Luke is startled. With an expression of horror he kneels to examine the carcass, lifting the beak and turning the head toward him. ‘Oh no,’ he sighs, ‘that’s the bird. That’s the one I told you about, the bird in the banksia tree.’ (Luke to Anna) Chapter 3

The wool had smouldered, and smouldered, but had not blazed, and the ember had burnt itself out. Anna stares at it, at the sweater that almost caught alight but didn’t, at the house around her that might have burned down and is still standing. Chapter 3

This child of their loins, only seven and a half months old, dead in the womb; their dearest boy whose heartbeat had one day stopped, lapsed into silence, with his parents unawares, thinking that all was well, that nature was taking its course and that their lives were going along just fine. (about Luke and Anna) Chapter 3

…. Anna collapsing onto the deck and he, alone, stepping to the edge of the boat and sprinkling the ashes over the white-tipped waves. It was a cold day, and he had worn the navy ribbed sweater, the one that at the height of the fire he had discarded on the bed, because he could not bear the thought that it might come to any harm, and because it reminded him too much of other damage. Chapter 3

Luke is standing there, just inside the back door, and she sees that he has been crying. ‘Is it that bad?’ she asks. She has never seen Luke cry, not even once.
He shakes his head. ‘Not the fire,’ he murmurs. ‘Not the fire.’
‘The boy?’ He nods, unable to speak, and stands on the spot, as if to take another step is entirely beyond him. (Anna and Luke) Chapter 3

Then she sees a figure on the lagoon, sitting upright in a small skiff and paddling out to sea. And the shape of this slight figure is familiar. She jerks her head upright, squinting into the sun, for it’s hard to see clearly and the glare off the water is blinding. And yes, it is him, it’s the boy, and she sees now that the sloop is for him, is waiting to carry him to his next destination. Chapter 3