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Edwin + Matilda: An Unlikely Love Story
I wonder why Edwin's mother left him - why his mother left and mine stayed? I mean, which is the more damaging - the mother who tells you she loves you and leaves, or the mother who calls you stupid and stays?
This beautifully written new novel by Laurence Fearnley is about finding love in the most unlikely of places. Set if the southern South Island, it describes the unusual bond formed between sixty-two-year-old photographer Edwin and twenty-two-year-old Matilda, as their relationship grows in ways neither could possibly have predicted.
I liked the look of concentration on his face when we made love. His hands moved gently over my body; it was as if he was turning the pages of some fragile book - the type of book that has tissue pages, like an old-fashioned Bible. He reminded me, too, of a child learning to read. I pictured his fingertips tracing the words on the page, his lips mouthing the sounds, so intense was his focus. 'Edwin,' I teased, 'am I a good book?'
This beautifully written new novel by Laurence Fearnley is about finding love in the most unlikely of places. Set if the southern South Island, it describes the unusual bond formed between sixty-two-year-old photographer Edwin and twenty-two-year-old Matilda, as their relationship grows in ways neither could possibly have predicted.
I liked the look of concentration on his face when we made love. His hands moved gently over my body; it was as if he was turning the pages of some fragile book - the type of book that has tissue pages, like an old-fashioned Bible. He reminded me, too, of a child learning to read. I pictured his fingertips tracing the words on the page, his lips mouthing the sounds, so intense was his focus. 'Edwin,' I teased, 'am I a good book?'
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
4 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Fearnley
21 books51 followersLaurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards and was shortlisted for the international 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing. Her book Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana Book Awards. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. Laurence Fearnley lives in Dunedin with her husband and son.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 18, 2025
3,5 stars
very well written, strong characters, but, I was really let down by the ending :/
very well written, strong characters, but, I was really let down by the ending :/
January 26, 2020
Exquisite. Both characters are deeply thoughtful. They are good people, living with deep wounds. Their lives are very different to each other, yet somehow they have something to offer each other - an unobtrusive acceptance that works towards healing. A truly exceptional writer - she was recommended to me by a librarian in NZ when I asked about NZ authors. This book was easy to read, yet full of depth. Looking forward to more books by Laurence Fearnley.
September 30, 2012
OMG if I could write like her. I want to read and re-read..
January 9, 2013
A devastatingly sad and utter heartbreaking story of love and the quest to find and understand it. Laurence Fearnley really is a master of description - her South Island is always so real and so right, her characters are pitch perfect.
Laurence really cuts to the heart of the situation - clearly a keen observer, she captures nuance, situation and detail perfectly. The book has many wonderful passages but this one - early on - struck me as particularly clever; the kind of detail and perfect noticing that makes a book memorable and develops it's characters into 'real', believable people.
Edwin, the central character, a photographer speaks about the change in business over the years...
"...a 'boutique' with painted windows that initially traded under the name Through the Keyhole but more recently became Adult Entertainment and Sex Toys.
"It was the latter business that sent him customers. It had taken him by surprise at first, the middle-aged, slightly downtrodden people who would arrive in his studio, mumbling requests for something exotic but tasteful. Often it would be older women wanting to show a side of them that had gone unnoticed by their husbands for years. Behind a curtain in his back room they would shuffle out of elastic-wasted track pants and teal sweatshirts and reappear heavily made up and dressed in red or black lace,their decolletage red and mottled from years of sun exposure, their thighs dimpled and showing traces of varicose veins, their ankles thick and perhaps decorated with a small rose tattoo as they tottered to the centre of the studio on fur-trimmed mules."
Edwin + Matilda is dense and rich and detailed. With the two main characters taking parts of the book as their own, their stories then weave together - between times we get the back story of their lives, which adds a weight and understanding to the novel.
What I was expecting from this book was a trot-along Kiwi love story. What I go was a hollowness - a real feeling of sadness and grief for the main characters and a feeling of utter loss when I finished the last page.
Laurence really cuts to the heart of the situation - clearly a keen observer, she captures nuance, situation and detail perfectly. The book has many wonderful passages but this one - early on - struck me as particularly clever; the kind of detail and perfect noticing that makes a book memorable and develops it's characters into 'real', believable people.
Edwin, the central character, a photographer speaks about the change in business over the years...
"...a 'boutique' with painted windows that initially traded under the name Through the Keyhole but more recently became Adult Entertainment and Sex Toys.
"It was the latter business that sent him customers. It had taken him by surprise at first, the middle-aged, slightly downtrodden people who would arrive in his studio, mumbling requests for something exotic but tasteful. Often it would be older women wanting to show a side of them that had gone unnoticed by their husbands for years. Behind a curtain in his back room they would shuffle out of elastic-wasted track pants and teal sweatshirts and reappear heavily made up and dressed in red or black lace,their decolletage red and mottled from years of sun exposure, their thighs dimpled and showing traces of varicose veins, their ankles thick and perhaps decorated with a small rose tattoo as they tottered to the centre of the studio on fur-trimmed mules."
Edwin + Matilda is dense and rich and detailed. With the two main characters taking parts of the book as their own, their stories then weave together - between times we get the back story of their lives, which adds a weight and understanding to the novel.
What I was expecting from this book was a trot-along Kiwi love story. What I go was a hollowness - a real feeling of sadness and grief for the main characters and a feeling of utter loss when I finished the last page.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 10, 2009
At first I wondered how I would cope with the age gap between the two protagonists but I coped beautifully :) I loved the setting of this book, up in Central Otago(Ranfurly, Waipiata, Alexandra) and it was very well written.
May 16, 2011
I enjoyed this story of age-mis-matched love. Perhaps I really wanted to know what happened to them in the future and perhaps that is another book I suppose. It's nicely written and they both have baggage and it's very real. Yeah, it was OK. Better than The Hut Builder
November 16, 2018
Hated it to finish.
A journey physically and mentally that travelled through the South Island landscape and the lives of a 62 year old man in termoral about a secret from the past and 22 year old women keeping a illness secret.
Fate brought them together and maybe made their secrets bearable.
A journey physically and mentally that travelled through the South Island landscape and the lives of a 62 year old man in termoral about a secret from the past and 22 year old women keeping a illness secret.
Fate brought them together and maybe made their secrets bearable.
January 12, 2026
This is one of those books that I was actually glad to be reading a physical copy of, because when it finished I really needed to hug it to my chest for a minute. Truly lovely, deeply heartbreaking. I keep finding myself picking it up again and flipping through to reread certain passages, just because they're on my mind and I want to live in them a little longer.
I honestly was a little annoyed by the odd structure, where each third person subjective chapter is broken up by little first person asides--almost like journal entries, the way they're written in the past tense, and sometimes they're reflecting on moments of the characters' distant pasts but other times they're reflecting on events in the narrative that haven't actually happened yet. Sometimes this was delightful, offering not-so-subtle hints of things to look forward to later on. But mostly this just made things weirdly muddled, and, I felt, possibly less impactful; I often found myself uncertain about which revelations had been revealed to which characters and when. Still, I loved getting to witness those revelations, especially delivered as they were, so directly from the characters. And this allowed us to get the final aside from Edwin's mother, telling us about what she'd done and why, and that was beautiful and devastating at the same time. Ugh, I really fell in love with these characters.
On a personal note, regarding my quest for age gap romances featuring actual adult protagonists, this one almost didn't count. Matilda is only 22, and I've been looking for the younger partner to be in their late-20s at the least, ideally 30s or older. Of course, I'm glad I gave it a shot anyway, because wow I adored this. But I do also wish these scant few books I've found didn't also entail something being "wrong" with the character(s) to make them susceptible to these relationships in some way. Matilda's reflections on her were raw and harrowing and affecting and purposeful. It's just that I continue holding out hope for a book where something so tragic doesn't need to befall the romantic leads in order for them to consider the other as a partner. I suppose my quest continues on, though this was a truly lovely stop along the way.
I honestly was a little annoyed by the odd structure, where each third person subjective chapter is broken up by little first person asides--almost like journal entries, the way they're written in the past tense, and sometimes they're reflecting on moments of the characters' distant pasts but other times they're reflecting on events in the narrative that haven't actually happened yet. Sometimes this was delightful, offering not-so-subtle hints of things to look forward to later on. But mostly this just made things weirdly muddled, and, I felt, possibly less impactful; I often found myself uncertain about which revelations had been revealed to which characters and when. Still, I loved getting to witness those revelations, especially delivered as they were, so directly from the characters. And this allowed us to get the final aside from Edwin's mother, telling us about what she'd done and why, and that was beautiful and devastating at the same time. Ugh, I really fell in love with these characters.
On a personal note, regarding my quest for age gap romances featuring actual adult protagonists, this one almost didn't count. Matilda is only 22, and I've been looking for the younger partner to be in their late-20s at the least, ideally 30s or older. Of course, I'm glad I gave it a shot anyway, because wow I adored this. But I do also wish these scant few books I've found didn't also entail something being "wrong" with the character(s) to make them susceptible to these relationships in some way. Matilda's reflections on her were raw and harrowing and affecting and purposeful. It's just that I continue holding out hope for a book where something so tragic doesn't need to befall the romantic leads in order for them to consider the other as a partner. I suppose my quest continues on, though this was a truly lovely stop along the way.
September 15, 2018
I love Laurence's writing so much! I devoured this book within 24hours, it is just beautiful!
December 30, 2019
Beautifully written New Zealand novel, set in the South Island. It is about finding love in unexpected places, and giving yourself up to the wonder of such an unexpected event.
June 24, 2016
I saw this book and new I had to buy it.
The cover looks so pretty and a bit old-fashioned and I like the style a lot.
The story is about Edwin, 62, a photographer who has just retired and goes on a journey to find his mother, who left him as a child.
Matilda is 23, has just ended her engagement and moved out of the house she and her ex-boyfriend lived in together. She wants to make a documentary about elderly people and brings her camera with her all the time.
Together, they visit the sanatorium where Edwin grew up, follow leads to see people his mother knew and on the way get to know each other way more than they would have expected.
As the title says, it's "an unlikely love story". And a love story it is.
I read that many people had a problem with the age gap of 40 years between the protagonists, but I've never seen that as odd or strange.
For me, they seem to fit as a couple. They are similar and complement each other at the same time.
Both had imprinting childhoods, especially concerning their relationships to their mothers.
Edwins left him even if she said, she loves him. Matildas stayed, but would have loved to not have her around.
In the beginning, I wasn't sure which illness Matilda suffered from. I guessed wrong, but when she told Edwin, I was kind of glad, because I hadn't read many books about her illness and found the way Fearnley inculded it in her story fitting.
That Matilda has to learn to live with her illness and that it restricts her, but that she hasn't given up yet and even finds a new love in Edwin.
I liked the road-trip atmosphere of the book. I haven't read many books set in News Zealand and it was nice to read about the country.
The cover looks so pretty and a bit old-fashioned and I like the style a lot.
The story is about Edwin, 62, a photographer who has just retired and goes on a journey to find his mother, who left him as a child.
Matilda is 23, has just ended her engagement and moved out of the house she and her ex-boyfriend lived in together. She wants to make a documentary about elderly people and brings her camera with her all the time.
Together, they visit the sanatorium where Edwin grew up, follow leads to see people his mother knew and on the way get to know each other way more than they would have expected.
As the title says, it's "an unlikely love story". And a love story it is.
I read that many people had a problem with the age gap of 40 years between the protagonists, but I've never seen that as odd or strange.
For me, they seem to fit as a couple. They are similar and complement each other at the same time.
Both had imprinting childhoods, especially concerning their relationships to their mothers.
Edwins left him even if she said, she loves him. Matildas stayed, but would have loved to not have her around.
In the beginning, I wasn't sure which illness Matilda suffered from. I guessed wrong, but when she told Edwin, I was kind of glad, because I hadn't read many books about her illness and found the way Fearnley inculded it in her story fitting.
That Matilda has to learn to live with her illness and that it restricts her, but that she hasn't given up yet and even finds a new love in Edwin.
I liked the road-trip atmosphere of the book. I haven't read many books set in News Zealand and it was nice to read about the country.
June 25, 2013
This is the story of Edwin, a 62 year old man who grew up at the Sanatorium because his father was the Medical Superintendent, and Matilda, a 22 year old woman. Call me a prude, but I never quite got over the age difference in this love story. And I was irritated by the fact that on one hand Fearnley seems to be implying that love should not be bound by age or circumstance, but then she gives her characters so many issues that you get the feeling she is trying to excuse the age difference by implying that if the characters were 'normal' they would not be in love. I did really like both the characters though, and I liked the journey they took together to try and unwind some of Edwin's issues. I felt though that the book was only the beginning of the story, and that Fearnley just couldn't figure out what happened next so she simply ended the book. As for the Sanatorium, it was interesting to see how Fearnley had brought information she got (from sources which I have used myself) to life, and in felt a bit jealous that fiction writers get to have more fun than historians.
August 16, 2012
Well, i thought it was readable; I finished the book without it becoming a chore, but if it wasn't for wanting more books in my New Zealand shelf I might quite swiftly have forgotten the book. Except, the book uses a setting I know very well, and because I know it so well, the author can do a poor job of evoking it, and the setting is still vivid in my mind. The setting is the South New Zealand Land from Otago to the West Coast including the ubiquitous large abandoned institutional buildings that used to serve as various hospitals. I happen to live in one of them! So I'm literally at home in the setting. But feel a quite awesome setting was not really brought to life for folks who don't happen to live in it. I could be wrong, because I'm too close to read it objectively. The book is not without merit. I like her opening better than the finish.
January 25, 2008
My little sister gave this to me for Christmas. A suprising understated love story between to very different but very lovely characters. Set in the South Island of New Zealand, capturing the environment and culture of that part of the world in a subtle but charming way.
May 5, 2023
I really enjoyed this book. An unusual story well written I liked the style of sharing the characters thoughts before each chapter. Such interesting characters the struggles they both experienced palpable.
May 9, 2011
Parson's egg. Over-analysis of edwin character gets tedious.
October 6, 2011
Sweet story, well written.
November 19, 2012
Lovely book. New Zealand author I hadn't heard of before now, but will definitely look out for some other books from her. Sad story told with much perceptiveness and empathy. I recommend it.
January 26, 2014
This is a carefully crafted book. So beautifully written. Gentle and poignant - I loved it.
March 20, 2014
Loved it.
June 24, 2016
A beautiful story and a well written book. Didn't catch me quite, but that's just my taste.
July 30, 2019
Thoughtful and evocative narration of the self consciousness experienced with interpersonal relationships.
Listening to reading on RNZ
Listening to reading on RNZ
August 18, 2021
A stunningly well written story. Everyone south of Christchurch should add it to their bookshelves
November 12, 2024
➛ 4 stars
July 5, 2024
Reread. This unconventional love story is just as tender and heartbreaking as I remembered it to be. This book started my love of Laurence Fearnley’s writing
November 29, 2011
Reading this was kind of a chore. I hate chores. So I stopped reading it.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews