The Words for Her

Hold up your phone to take a photo and some people won’t be there. Look for them in older images and their bodies are gaps, the rest of the photo still busy around them. People have stopped appearing in photographs. First a handful, then many more. Does this new, troubling group pose a threat?

From their home in Whakatāne, Jodie Pascoe and her daughter Jade watch as the number of gaps grows. While protecting Jade, Jodie searches for a friend from the past, Miri, who will help her navigate the collapsing present.

The Words for Her is an arresting story about how photographs bind us together and what happens when those binds fall away.

You can order a copy of The Words for Her from Lawrence & Gibson, or buy a copy from your local bookseller (distributed in Aotearoa only).

“If you are going to read one novel this year, make it this one. The Words for Her is a master class in blending intriguing and intelligent ideas about images and words with the realist grit of surviving as a solo parent in a small provincial town; complete with a twist of dystopia and societal collapse. ”

— Stella Chrysostomou, Volume Books

“...The Words For Her kind of blew my mind. It’s an exercise in making us think about semiotics: about how words are images and how they too can memorialise, commemorate and illuminate. What are written records if not ways to see? ”

— Claire Mabey, The Spinoff

Women in the Field, One and Two

Women in the Field, One and Two explores two women’s creativity and freedom against the backdrop of art history's patriarchal biases.

A young British woman in post-war London is tasked with recommending acquisitions for New Zealand's National Art Gallery. When she ventures into the basement of a charismatic Russian painter three decades her senior, she discovers a solution that reconciles her idea of that far-away country and her own modernist sensibilities.

Thomasin talks about this novel on RNZ, and was interviewed about the book by Holly Walker for the Pantograph Punch.

You can order a copy of Women in the Field, One and Two from Lawrence & Gibson, or buy a copy from your local bookseller (distributed in Aotearoa only).

Thanks to Creative New Zealand for their support of the production of this novel.

“Women in the Field, One and Two is a feminist novel, an art critique and a page-turner, using all of the conventional and experimental tools at the author’s disposal to create an intimate and captivating work.”

— Francis Cooke, Landfall Review Online

“Vividly detailed with shifting settings, characters and conversations, the story reveals an era loaded with patriarchal and social constrictions alongside nuanced portraits of women, artists, Londoners and colonials...It’s thoroughly compelling, insightful and engaging...””

— Kathryn Webster, Art News New Zealand

Ad Lib

Ad Lib is a book about reality TV, memory, grief, and the fluidity and power of images.

When celebrity singer Carmen Crane passes away, her only daughter inherits a reality TV show. As Kyla Crane adjusts to this new scrutiny, strange things start to happen: the house is rearranged over night, unknown characters appear, the show's narrative loses its way, and the camera crew begin to echo events. When fragments of her mother's past surface, Kyla is compelled to scroll through the footage and come to her own conclusions about life in the public eye and her ambiguous inheritance.

Ad Lib was selected as one of the Listener’s ‘Best Books of 2014’ and on the New Zealand Book Council’s ‘Best Reads of 2014’ end-of-year blog.

Thomasin talks about the book with Lynn Freeman on RNZ, and was interviewed about the book by the NZ Book Council.

You can purchase a copy of Ad Lib from Lawrence & Gibson.

“Ad Lib is engaging and character-driven in a way that belies its handling of big ideas about our visual culture - among them, the conventions we demand of ‘reality’ on the screen and what the mean for the way we organise our lives (in a world where cameras really are omnipresent).”

— Sam Finnemore , New Zealand Listener