KIRSTY ILTNERS Depth of Field. Reviewed by Ann Skea

Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, photographer Kirsty Iltners’ first novel explores both darkness and light.

If you want to freeze something fast, you increase the shutter speed – but it makes the image darker.

Tom’s memories of his first encounter with Adeline are sharp, but there is darkness all around.

Now in his forties, Tom remembers the ice-cream queue, the few minutes of youthful banter between them, the man (‘Tanned. Muscular’) ill-treating a puppy, Adeline’s determination to ‘save’ it, and his own impulsive actions. The darkness is that Adeline is no longer with him; but also, as is clear when he re-tells this memory later, there are things and people left out, obscured, forgotten, perhaps deliberately.

‘Bear with me,’ he says:

My memories of Adeline are part of me, running though my blood and buried under my skin, but some of the specifics have become fragile and crumble at my touch. From scraps, I’ve had to build them into something solid. Fill in the blanks.

Photography is important in Kirsty Iltners’ novel. Not just as part of the story, but as the structure used to tell it. The three sections, titled ‘Shutter Speed’, ‘Aperture’ and ‘ISO’, reflect the definitions given in the preamble before the story begins. ‘Shutter Speed’ offers sharp snapshots of the present lives of two very different characters: Tom and Lottie. ‘Aperture’ prioritises the ‘depth of field’, getting deeper into their lives; and the ‘ISO’ chapters throw more light on everything, revealing facts that are dark and traumatic, and adding ‘grain’ and texture. Photography (like storytelling, one might add) is always ‘a balancing act’: there are always ‘choices’ and ‘sacrifices’. You can manipulate the setting to ‘curate’ something ‘flawless’ but most of us just ‘use it to remember’, and memory is fallible.

Kirsty Iltners’ novel is nothing like as contrived and manipulated as this sounds. Both Tom and Lottie come alive in her pages, and their thoughts, emotions, experiences and memories draw you in so that you feel you know them.

Tom seems like a nice bloke – living in a ‘battered’ old house that creaks in the wind, working as a photographer with a young real estate agent whose name he can never remember (‘Some kind of precious stone’: she becomes ‘Ruby’, ‘Sapphire’, ‘Amethyst’,  ‘Diamond’ , as the novel progresses), and surviving on greasy takeaways. He shares sex with Freya, whom he has known for three years but who, like him, desires not to become involved. He thinks of her, sadly, as being ‘someone closer to being a stranger than a friend’, because Adeline is constantly in his thoughts, and clearly something terrible has happened to part them, for which Tom blames himself. This tragedy haunts his life, but we do not learn what it is until the final pages of the book.

Lotte, a 17-year-old single mother, is totally different. Life is new for her, still full of dreams and possibilities, although these are gradually being destroyed by the trials of surviving with 6-month-old Carol in a poky, barely furnished flat over a fish and chip shop, and by the impersonal, seemingly impossible, demands of social security staff she had thought were there to help her.

Lotte’s first shock was being abandoned by her 30-year-old boss, who had seduced her. At home she had lived with an emotionally distant mother who was often ‘physically present but completely checked out’, a violent father who only noticed her when she managed to keep the house running, and a younger brother for whom she cared but who was her father’s favourite. She had seemed almost invisible. Her boss had noticed her (the most important thing), courted her, bought her an expensive necklace, and treated her to nights in expensive hotels.

I imagined a new shiny life with someone who saw me, understood me and loved me.

He had seemed like my ticket out.

But I was stupid and naive.

Still am.

Lotte struggles with feelings of isolation. She is aware all the time that others are judging her. At the playgroup she attends, trying to comply with one of the requirements on which her social security support money depends, she feels different to other mothers with their partners, their cars, and their ease with money – none of which she has. She avoids phone calls from her mother, who always ends by complaining that Lottie never visits her and the baby will soon not recognise her. Lottie’s mother never leaves the house, and ‘does nothing’, but her father controls all the money and, it becomes apparent, controls her mother, too.

Lotte, however, is not about to admit defeat. As a way of gaining some control of her life she begins to write lists:

Can opener

Photo frames.

Candles.

Plants.

The things which get added to the list or crossed off chart what happens in her life as her story progresses. ‘Beach toys’, ‘A five-dollar bill’, and ‘A sense of direction’ get added. ‘A sense of direction’ and ‘Photo frames’ are among the things removed.

It is hard to convey the way Tom’s and Lottie’s stories grip you. Their childhood memories are very different; as are their personalities and their interests. Kirsty Iltners may have given us only snapshots of their lives but both have strong voices that draw you in so that you feel you know them and begin to care about them.

Towards the end of the book, there are hopeful signs that Lotte’s life is improving. In Tom’s case, the cause of his trauma remains in the dark areas of his memory until the final pages of the book. In these pages, too, unexpected events occur that for both Tom and Lottie suggest a whole new future, complex but brighter, is about to unfold for them.

Depth of Field is a beautifully written, carefully crafted story, and an absorbing and moving reflection of life with all its joys and woes. That there are deeper meanings to it is suggested by two pages, unnumbered and unidentified as part of any chapter. It is not clear whether the voice is Tom’s or the author’s. Both are thought provoking.

The first, before the story begins, contains a statement about photography that also applies to life:

In photography, you don’t get to have it all. You are always making choices, always making sacrifices.

To capture the light.

No matter how careful you are, the voice tells us, you don’t always get the balance right, and others will always find something wrong and think they could do better. Then comes a challenge:

Admit it. You do too.

On the second of these pages, at the end of the story, the same unidentifiable voice comments on the fallibility of memories and our ability to ‘judge the actions of others while making exceptions for ourselves’:

We lie to each other, but the person we lie to most is ourselves. If you’re truly honest with yourself, you have to admit it.

You forget too.

So, how have we judged Tom and Lottie; what have we forgotten about our own pasts; have we convinced ourselves that we would have acted differently; and would we have found a better balance between the dark and the light?

Kirsty Iltners Depth of Field UWA Publishing 2024 PB 300pp $34.99

Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.

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Tags: Australian fiction, Australian women writers, isolation, Kirsty | Ilners, photography