The Words For Her

by Thomasin Sleigh

Hold up your phone to take a photo and some people won’t be there. Look for them in older images and their bodies are gaps, the rest of the photo still busy around them. People have stopped appearing in photographs. First a handful, then many more. Does this new, troubling group pose a threat?

From their home in Whakatāne, Jodie Pascoe and her daughter Jade watch as the number of gaps grows. While protecting Jade, Jodie searches for a friend from the past, Miri, who will help her navigate the collapsing present.

The Words for Her is an arresting story about how photographs bind us together and what happens when those binds fall away.

287 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2023

About the author

Thomasin Sleigh is a writer and editor living in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington. She has a background in art history and her essays and art criticism have been published widely by galleries, newspapers, and magazines. She has published two previous novels with Lawrence & Gibson, Ad Lib (2014), and Women in the Field, One and Two (2018), both of which look at the way images reflect and contest wider hierarchies and power structures, particularly how women are depicted and understood through art and film.

Reviews

[Courtney Johnston]

A very deft premise novel, set in Whākatane and centred on single mum Jodie and her six-year-old daughter Jade. All around the world, people have started to “go out” - individual by individual, their image can no longer be captured by lens-based technology (cameras, video, CCTV) and they also fade out of existing pictures (“gaps” begin appearing in ads, tv programmes, family photos…). Slowly then rapidly social conventions break down and distrust grows, as society splits between the “presents” and the “gaps”.

“The Words for Her” reminds me of two other “premise” books I really enjoyed, Naomi Alderman’s “The Power” (women around the world are suddenly imbued with a new physical strength in the form of an organic electrical current appearing in their bodies) and Karen Thompson Russell’s “The Age of Miracles” (the spin of the planet on its axis begins to slow, extending the lengths of days and nights and leading to social and environmental breakdown). By telling the story through Jodie (who herself may be implicated somehow in these disappearances) Sleigh builds out this newly precarious world as it is experienced, full of detail but without having to explain everything.

Kim Hill described this as being like a zombie novel and before I read it I was bemused (I think of Sleigh in terms of art & semiotics). But Hill is right — the book is almost a thriller, whilst also being an exploration of how our world revolves around images of ourselves. Compelling & absorbing.

[Caroline]

Such an interesting idea for a novel. It was a compelling and thought provoking read.

[Jade]

This book hits for anyone who was sentient during the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not about a pandemic at all—at least not one of illness. It is a Black Mirror-esque reality in which people begin disappearing from digital images: both print and digital photos, video.

All hell breaks loose. The suspicion of those who are “other” is palpable—almost immediately humans begin pitting the “gaps” (as those missing from images are called) and the “presents.” The experience of “going,” too, seems to spark serious psychological challenges for those who suddenly find themselves on the side of the socially-shunned.

All the while, a single mother seeks to sort out what is going on, whether a special gift of hers might have something to do with it, and—above all—how she can protect her child.

A great and super compelling novel from a colleague I have the privilege of knowing!

[Laurence]

Extraordinary premise that a global virus causes people to lose their presence in the online world, which Thomasin developes into a fascinating tale of social media, surviving on the breadline, the caution inside every woman in the world, and the othering of diufferent groups of people.

Fantastic writing and a real page turner (after a slow start) with a loveable family at the heart of the story.

[Julie]

'I'll start with Jade because she's the reason I'm writing this'. Written in the style of a confessional by young single mum Jodie as she tries to understand whether she has a special power with descriptive language. I agree with another reviewer that this is Black Mirror-esque. What happens when the images of individuals fade from all channels leaving gaps? Memories lost to loved one's, the famous no longer able to connect with fans, CCTV unable to record criminals. An interesting exploration of how central visual identity has become, how subcultures form, about violence and control.

[Lucy]

I don't really know how to describe this book. It's speculative fiction, but also an ode to motherly love, it's about belonging and memory and the power of words. I didn't get into it until half way through and while I thought it was very well written and powerful, I feel it lacked something. 3.5 stars.

[Elena Cremm]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - such a different premise. A worldwide chaotic situation where people start disappearing - going out - from photographs and electronic images. The chaos that follows, as human beings react to the unknown of this situation, is so believable! I was on the edge of my couch following Jodie and Jade trying to get out of this situation!

[Marian Woodward]

This book definitely makes you think of a world that isn’t based around social media and internet content. What if it all did just disappear….

Enjoyed some of the themes in this book but it didn’t completely grip me

[Karen Ross]

Well written but it wasn't me.

[Angela]

I LOVED the premise, but I couldn't get past the unnecessarily repetitive opening from the POV character. Just get on with it already!

[Gavan]

Wow, what a great concept & wonderful novel. People start "going out" (disappearing from images, but still there in real life). So society starts to splinter between those that can be seen in images ("presents") & those that cannot ("gaps"). Great insight into how we perceive ourselves in this world dominated by social media. Very fast paced - reads like a thriller with every chapter ending on a cliff-hanger. Loved it.