Pip Adam

Carla, Sharon and Duey have worked in fashion for longer than they care to remember, for them, there's nothing new under the sun. They're Generation X: tired, cynical and sick of being used. Tommy, Cal and Kurt are Millenials, they've come from nowhere, but with their monied families behind them they're ready to remake fashion. They represent the new sincere, the anti-irony. Both generations are searching for a way out, an alternative to their messed-up reality. Pip Adam's new novel walks the streets of Auckland city now, examining the fashion scene, intergenerational tension and modern life with an unflinching eye. From the the wreckage and waste of the 21st century, new animals must emerge.

The New Animals

A spaceship called Audition is hurtling through the cosmos. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three giants: Alba, Stanley and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. Talk they must, and as they do, Alba, Stanley and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves -- experiences of imprisonment, violence and misrecognition, of disempowerment and underprivilege. Pip Adam's uncategorisable new novel, part science fiction, part social realism, asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room -- about how we imagine new forms of justice, and how we transcend the bodies and selves we are given. Praise for Nothing to See: 'Brilliantly written...Pip Adam shows us what it is to fall apart and the cost of being reconstituted.' -- Australian Book Review 'A complex and mind-bending exploration of the challenges of staying together...It invites readers to consider the many ways the developed world is fragmenting and dividing women.' -- Mascara Literary Review 'A total masterpiece. Gripping, weird, funny, close to the bone. An intense portrait of sobriety, a mystery, a sci-fi novel, an urgent book about living in our panoptical present.' -- Dan Kois

Audition

It's 1994. Peggy and Greta are learning how to live sober. They go to meetings and they ring their support person, Diane. They have just enough money for one Tom Yum between them, but mostly they eat carrot sandwiches. They volunteer at the Salvation Army shop, and sometimes they sleep with men for money. They live with Heidi and Dell, who are also like them.It's 2006. Peggy and Greta have two jobs: a job at a call centre, and a job as a moderator for a website. They're teaching themselves how to code. Heidi and Dell don't live together anymore, and Dell keeps getting into trouble. One day, Peggy and Greta turn around and there's only one of them.It's 2018. Margaret lives next door to Heidi and her family. She has a job writing code that analyses data for a political organisation, and she's good at it. Every day she checks an obsolete cellphone she found under her bed, waiting for messages. She struggles to stay sober. Then, one day, there are two of them again, both trying to figure out where they have come from. Nothing to See is a compelling, brilliantly original novel about life in the era of surveillance capitalism, when society prefers not to see those who are different

Nothing To See

Ann Shelton

Alice Tappenden

Photographs of Nancy Martin's house which serves as the setting for the story written by Pip Adam with other text by Ann Shelton.

A Spoonful of Sugar

A spaceship called Audition is hurtling through the cosmos. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three giants: Alba, Stanley and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. Talk they must, and as they do, Alba, Stanley and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves — experiences of imprisonment, violence and misrecognition, of disempowerment and underprivilege. Pip Adam’s uncategorisable new novel, part science fiction, part social realism, asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room — about how we imagine new forms of justice, and how we transcend the bodies and selves we are given. Praise for Nothing to See: ‘Brilliantly written…Pip Adam shows us what it is to fall apart and the cost of being reconstituted.’ — Australian Book Review ‘A complex and mind-bending exploration of the challenges of staying together...It invites readers to consider the many ways the developed world is fragmenting and dividing women.’ — Mascara Literary Review ‘A total masterpiece. Gripping, weird, funny, close to the bone. An intense portrait of sobriety, a mystery, a sci-fi novel, an urgent book about living in our panoptical present.’ — Dan Kois

In the near future, an exact replica of the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa, is being built on New Zealand's West Coast. It's an exercise in economic stimulation and national confidence-building after a run of natural and financial disasters, and Catherine is the engineer in charge of making sure it all works. She feels there is something wrong in the plans, or is there something wrong in her? The novel travels from the top of the tower to a geodesic dome in a park in London; from the Grand Lisboa in Macau to student accommodation in Wellington; and from a South Auckland theme park to the Pompidou Centre, exploring the way chance events can undo the best efforts of human beings to plan and build their lives and worlds. I'm Working on a Building reveals the way that everything becomes clearer in reverse, because sometimes things have to be taken apart in order to be understood.

I'm Working on a Building

An unusually strong first book, this collection of short stories depends on exquisitely crafted surfaces that conceal shocking emotional force. Three of the stories are obliquely connected and feature young women on the edge. In the first of these, a new mother contemplates her new baby; in the second, a girl finds herself in rehab; and in the final story, the main character goes to jail. Other characters include a New Zealand serviceman returned from active duty in Dili, the employees of a $2 shop, and a vegan couple at a Samoan resort.

Everything We Hoped For

Carla, Sharon and Duey have worked in fashion for longer than they care to remember. For them, there’s nothing new under the sun. They’re Generation X: tired, cynical and sick of being used.Tommy, Cal and Kurt are millennials. They’ve come from nowhere, but with their monied families behind them they’re ready to remake fashion. They represent the new sincere, the anti-irony. Both generations are searching for a way out, an alternative to their messed-up reality.Pip Adam’s new novel walks the streets of Auckland city now, examining the fashion scene, intergenerational tension and modern life with an unflinching eye. From the wreckage and waste of the 21st century, new animals must emerge.

Pip Adam

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