Nothing to See

Shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards: The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction

Peggy and Greta are trying to get sober. They know almost nothing about the world: how to cook, how to shop, how to find a job. To fill time, they sort clothes at the Salvation Army shop, and attend daily AA meetings. They seem to have no identity of their own—or rather, they appear to have only one identity between the two of them. Then, without warning, one of them is gone, and the other is left alone, trying to find her place in the world. But is it Peggy or Greta who is left? Or is it someone else altogether?

Nothing to See is grounded in the details of everyday life, of sharehouses and workplaces, of substance abuse and sex, and of the emergence of new technologies that fill every facet of existence. Yet the women at its centre seem on the brink of disappearing altogether. Set in Auckland across three decades, Pip Adam's enigmatic, uncanny novel asks what it means to seek relief from shame and loneliness, to find care when the fabric of reality is ready to come apart.

'A total masterpiece. Gripping, weird, funny, close to the bone. An intense portrait of sobriety, a mystery, a sci-fi novel, an urgent book about living in our panoptical present.' - Dan Kois

'Wildly good... a fiery study in class and addiction and the boring exhausting grind of building a splintered life into something whole.' - Catherine Woulfe, The Spinoff