Winner - MITOQ BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD – E H MCCORMICK PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION 2021, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
'In this compulsively readable first book, Madison Hamill observes her own difference with an outsider’s detached gaze, and the ordinary people around her with tender curiosity. This is a work of a luminous new talent in New Zealand life writing.' —Judges' comments, 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Award
A father rollerblading to church in his ministerial robes, a university student in a leotard sprinting through fog, a trespass notice from Pak’nSave, a beautiful unborn goat in a jar . . .
In scenarios ranging from the mundane to the surreal, Madison Hamill looks back at her younger selves with a sharp eye. Was she good or evil? Ignorant or enlightened? What parts of herself did she give up in order to forge ahead in school, church, work, and relationships, with a self that made sense to others?
With wit and intelligence, these shape-shifting essays probe the ways in which a person’s inner and outer worlds intersect and submit to one another.
It is a brilliantly discomfiting, vivid and funny collection in which peace is found in the weirdest moments.
MADISON HAMILL is based in Wellington. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her work has appeared in The Spinoff, Sweet Mammalian, Turbine Kapohau and Pantograph Punch.
Paperback
234 pages