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  • Published: 1 February 2016
  • ISBN: 9781775530275
  • Imprint: Random House NZ
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 239

The House Within



A thought-provoking, intriguing, brilliantly rendered story following 25 years of one woman's life.

A novel of linked stories about a woman's search for identity beyond family ties, expectations and demands.

Bethany Dixon is at the centre of a complex network of relationships. She is mother and stepmother, wife and ex, daughter-in-law, sister and lover. Earthy, generous, addicted to children and food, Bethany has yet to establish her place in the world. Peter, who has loved and left her, still perceives her as the central drama of his life.

In fragments and snapshots, Bethany, Peter and their children see their lives revealed as twenty-five years pass in the blink of a shutter. They discover their separate identities from unlikely sources.

  • Published: 1 February 2016
  • ISBN: 9781775530275
  • Imprint: Random House NZ
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 239

About the author

Fiona Kidman

Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has worked as a librarian, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film. The New Zealand Listener wrote: ‘In her craft and her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she is the best we have.’

She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; in more recent years, The Captive Wife was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction and was joint-winner of the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her short story collection The Trouble with Fire was shortlisted for both the NZ Post Book Awards and the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her novel This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Crime Writing Award for Best Novel.

She was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1998 in recognition of her contribution to literature, and more recently a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. ‘We cannot talk about writing in New Zealand without acknowledging her,’ wrote New Zealand Books. ‘Kidman’s accessible prose and the way she shows (mainly) women grappling to escape from restricting social pressures has guaranteed her a permanent place in our fiction.’

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