About the Book:
The conversion was Nick's idea.
Nick: so persuasive, ever the optimist, still boyishly handsome. Always on a quest to design the perfect environment, convinced it could heal a wounded soul.
The conversion was Nick's idea, but it's Zoe who's here now, in a valley of old coalmines and new vineyards, working out how to live in a deconsecrated church.
What to do with all that vertical space, those oppressive stained-glass windows? Can a church become a home or, even with all its vestiges removed, will it remain forever what it was intended to be?
For Zoe, alone and troubled by a ghost from the recent past, the little church seems empty of the possibilities Nick enthused about. She is stuck in purgatory—until a determined young teacher pushes her way into Zoe's life, convinced of her own peculiar mission for the building.
Melanie has something of Nick's unquenchable zeal about her. And it's clear to Zoe that she won't take no for an answer.
The Conversion is a startling novel about the homes we live in: how we shape them, and how they shape us. Like Amanda Lohrey's bestselling The Labyrinth, it is distinguished by its deep intelligence, eye for human drama and effortless readability.
Published by Text Publishing
Released October 2023
My Thoughts:
If it were possible for a novel to be entirely perfect, then The Conversion would easily fit the bill as the example text. How I loved this novel. I listened to it, and the narration was beautifully done, but of course, a novel has to be well written in the first place for a narrator to be able to do a good job of it. I feel like I'm rambling, but I can't help it. This novel. My heart.
First, there is the whole part about living in and converting a church into a dwelling. This was fascinating, I had no idea this was being done, to be honest. There are a couple of churches in the city where I live that have been converted into business space, but to live in? It hadn't crossed my mind. I dwelled often while listening to this one about how I would feel about living in a church and what I'd want it to look like if I did. I could understand Zoe's reservations, but also understood the appeal.
Next, we have the grief. And in this, I don't necessarily mean grief over losing a husband. Rather, grief over losing the life you thought you were living, the future you had thought you were going to get. How devastating, to have a person you have loved for so long destroy everything about your lives together and then have the audacity to die, leaving you unable to grieve in the way you would have been able to if circumstances were different.
And Zoe. How much I enjoyed her as a protagonist. I really related to her as a mother of two sons who are as different to each other as Zoe's were. I related to her as a woman who has reached an age where she wants her work to be meaningful yet easy and stress free. I related to her own personal conversion, the exorcism of ghosts within, and the embracing of a new and slower life, filled with the things and the people that matter.
This is brilliant Australian fiction. Truly divine. It's my first read of Amanda Lohrey but now I'm eager to read everything else she has written. She writes with a deep intelligence, inviting the reader into a state of introspection and contemplation. Every word, every sentence; it all just flowed so smoothly and was such a joy to read.
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