Iltners, Kirsty. Depth of Field. Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2024. RRP $34.99, 336pp, ISBN: 9781760802752.
Jen Bowden
It’s easy to see why Kirsty Iltners’ debut novel, Depth of Field, received the Dorothy Hewett Award. The Brisbane-based writer has created a stunning work full of shifting perspectives, of human fallibility and the tangled web of family connections that define us, all viewed through the lens of photography.
The story is told through two expertly entwined narratives that, at first glance, seem divergent, but which reveal their similarities as the novel unfolds. Photographer Tom’s only commitment is to his disintegrating house, Mayfield, that he once shared with the love of his life. He regularly takes pictures of other people’s homes for real estate websites only to return to his isolated life shared by too many bottles of wine and a casual lover who he refuses to be emotionally vulnerable with.
Lottie is struggling to make ends meet. A teenage mother whose life is now defined by her baby, Coral, she’s forced to jump through administrative hoops in order to receive government benefits. Her future is uncertain and her relationship with her family is strained after the birth of her daughter.
While both characters are explored in great depth in this novel, it’s Lottie’s narrative that hits hardest. Perhaps this is because the current cost of living crisis makes it easy to empathise with her financial struggles and isolation, her constant fear of not making it or of going without food? Her position as a new mother is another reason that Lottie’s storyline is so impactful. Teenage pregnancy is rarely explored as openly and honestly as it is in Depth of Field.
Lottie’s life is like one big catch-22. She has to attend playgroup in order to receive her benefits, but to log her attendance she needs an app, which she can’t afford. Her tale is writhing with complex questions—who eats and who doesn’t—and contradictions such as her love for her child and the knowledge of how that child came to be. It’s hinted that Lottie was groomed by an older man, rather than being in a relationship with someone her own age. Yet none of the people she encounters want her side of the story, and we’re shown the prejudice she experiences at the hands of other mothers, the community and her own family:
It takes me a while to get organised and out of the house. Not in the practical way you’re probably imagining […] but just in building up the courage to be around people, with their endless opinions and judgements. I feel their eyes on me constantly, weighing me down with their stares […] Before Coral was born, it was foreign to me, feeling that way: watched. (57)
This theme of observing but also being observed runs throughout the book, not just in Lottie’s experience but also in Tom’s narrative as a photographer of other people’s homes and, therefore, lives.
Where Lottie’s social exile is imposed on her, Tom’s is by choice. It’s not revealed until much later why he lives such a lonely, isolated life, constantly seeing the world through his camera lens and subtly judging others while he’s at it, but when the revelation comes, suddenly everything makes sense.
Instead of focusing on Tom’s faults, Iltners uses his character to explore the stories we tell ourselves about our own fallibility. We know throughout that there’s something not quite right, but Tom skirts around the issue, not revealing anything but minor details that add another piece to the puzzle of what is happening: ‘I realise I don’t remember what flowers were on her coffin. White? Maybe pink? I don’t remember which photo was displayed. One solitary photo. One second in time to capture a life’ (102). Tom’s view of the world through a camera comes to define his narration. We only see snapshots of the truth and only get half the story as his memory fails to capture the details that his solid camera could. In this way, he keeps everyone at arm’s length, yet reveals so much about his deep love for his previous partner, Adeline. This contradiction is what unsettles our perception of Tom’s character, as waves of emotional outpouring are interspersed with a sense that he is withholding the details of his story. Where the camera captures everything, and can’t easily lie, it’s made clear that the narrators in this tale have their own way of telling their stories.
Iltners is a smart, creative and promising writer. Her photographer’s eye offers a unique perspective on how isolating life can be, even when we’re surrounded by people. Depth of Field is a novel that will speak to the current state of society and the way we live our lives through curated images, milestones and social media-posted ‘moments’. It’s heart-breaking, compelling and thought-provoking.
Jen is a writer, editor, podcast host and event moderator based in Brisbane. She has worked in publishing and journalism in the UK and Australia, and regularly writes for The Guardian, The Bookseller and Westerly. She teaches writing, editing and publishing at Curtin University, where she also did her PhD in Creative Writing exploring accentism and bias against Northern writers in the UK book industry. She runs the Northern Voices podcast.