Depth of Field by Kirsty Iltners

In photography, you don't get to have it all. You are always making choices, always making sacrifices. To capture the light.

Tom's longest-standing commitment is his run-down house Mayfield, which hasn't been the same since Adeline. He's stuck in the past drowning his sorrows in too many bottles of wine and an unfulfilling photography business. Unable to move on Tom is treading water in a low-commitment relationship. The only problem"she isn't Adeline.

Lottie is living with her baby, Coral, in a cramped flat above a fish and chip shop. Struggling to make ends meet, all she wants is to find connection"with her distant mother, the parent's group, her old school friends, but Lottie straddles too many different worlds to quite fit into any of them. She doesn't have much, but at least her and Coral have each other.

Told through alternating perspectives, Kirsty Iltners' debut novel examines the lives of two isolated individuals to reveal the fragility of life and the fallibility of our memories. Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, Depth of Field is a gripping novel where the mechanisms of photography are allowed to falter just enough to expose how selective and unreliable our memories are, especially when parts of the truth are left out of the frame.

Kirsty Iltners is a writer and photographer living on Jagera and Turrbal Country, Meanjin (Brisbane). She has a degree in psychology and is currently studying law. Kirsty has worked as a photographer for Brisbane Times and Broadsheet, and runs her business, Pandora Photography. She's had an image shortlisted for the National Portrait Prize in 2021, which was displayed in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Depth of Field is her first novel which won the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award.

Depth of Field

by Kirsty Iltners

IWAP Publishing

RRP: $34.99

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