Depth of Field

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 she 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 in which 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.

‘Masterful, poignant, heartbreaking.’ - Siang Lu

‘Affecting, innovative and original. Such an impressive debut novel.’ - Brendan Ritchie

‘Kirsty Iltner's dazzling debut peers beyond the composed shots we curate for public viewing. Memory is a slippery tale and this one delivers.’ - Sharlene Allsopp

‘Depth of Field in essence is portraiture taken at the young edges of society. Iltners' protagonists grapple with social isolation, new parenthood, poverty, and dependence. Skillfully stitched together, this is a novel that exposes the truth as grainy and low-res; as unreliable as a photograph. A compelling debut from a striking new literary talent.’ - Sarah Sasson

‘An incredible debut full of love, grief, regret – how trauma can collapse the lives it affects – and the possibility of redemption.’ - Graham Akhurst