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  • Published: 29 August 2007
  • ISBN: 9780143007395
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.95

Edwin and 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 novel by Laurence Fearnley is about finding love in the most unlikely of places. Set in 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?'
Also available as an eBook

  • Published: 29 August 2007
  • ISBN: 9780143007395
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.95

About the author

Laurence Fearnley

Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2014 her novel Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and, in 2008, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2016 she won the NZSA/ Janet Frame Memorial Award and in 2017 she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition. She was named a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2019. She lives in Dunedin.

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