Capture by Amanda Lohrey – Our Review

Our Review…

A psychiatrist, Jim, is convinced to take on a new research project – to establish a clinical profile of ‘experiencers’, that is people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. It’s not the sort of task he’d normally tackle and plenty of his colleagues and friends are skeptical about it. But as a premise for a novel – what a great idea! Together with his research assistant Lucy, Jim listens to story after story of alien encounters from what seem to be ordinary people.

There appear to be some common themes in their stories (we’re destroying our world and the aliens want to procreate to make a new one), but not just one clinical profile. In fact, while the premise of this novel from Miles Franklin Award-winner Amanda Lohrey sounds wild and exciting, what is most striking is how normal these people are – their stories are sometimes mesmerising, sometimes traumatic and sometimes mundane. Gradually both Jim and Lucy feel themselves defending these experiencers, noting that others who were not in the room couldn’t understand what they witnessed. Rather than a sensationalising of alien abduction and its trauma, Capture is a contemplative examination of the search for meaning in our lives and an intriguing quest to find a new way to make sense of things.

Review by Andi @ Great Escape Books