A comic strip is not so funny when you’re drawing to forget.
Their dreams of parenthood dashed, Harvey and Isobel go for dream jobs instead. Harvey hangs up his stethoscope to become a cartoonist and Isobel takes a promotion at the local museum. Then an abandoned baby comes up for adoption, and Harvey and Isobel discover a family is more work than they bargained for. By Fleur’s eighth birthday it’s all come together nicely – then a voice from the past threatens to nuke their hard-won happiness. Harvey doesn’t stop to think. He acts, and with tragic consequences.
Strip is an intriguing drama that explores how far good people will go to protect the people they love, and asks: Is it possible to love too much?
March 2020: Strip has now been published in Bulgaria under the title of Fleur.
Strip longlisted for NZ Book Awards
Read an extract from Strip here.
With a poet’s eye for detail and an ear fine-tuned for language, Sue Wootton reveals the light within the deep core of familial love. Finely constructed, moving and gently optimistic, Strip is a thought provoking meditation on the unexpected twists of promises kept, the weight of unintended consequences, and the courage and ultimate strength that comes from simply forging on.” — Laurence Fearnley
… a smart, sexy, quietly subversive novel from an author who totally knows what she is doing. Harsh tonic or sweet balm? Yes, a bit of both.” – Tina Shaw, Landfall Review Online, 3 April 2017
The domestic weave feels acutely real, yet the deeper, more troubling issues elevate this novel so it sticks to your skin. Wootton writes with heart, daring and quietness.” – Paula Green, The Southland Times, 14 January 2017
… compelling and extraordinarily humane … skilful characterisation and excellent pacing… Her small cast – Harvey, wife Isobel and daughter Fleur – are perfectly pitched.” – Sally Blundell, NZ Listener, 7 January 2017
… a novel of multiple felicities … very affecting, very accomplished” – David Hill, Weekend Herald, 19 November 2016
… thoughtfully written, thought-provoking examination of loss and absence, grief and love. I was convinced by the characters, captivated by their story, and compelled to read on at every stage.” – Helen Spiers, Otago Daily Times, 19 November 2016
… it’s a fine achievement in fiction when we suspend our disbelief as the strength of the telling convinces us. But it is an even more impressive occasion, I think, when an author is able to make us let go of our instinctive prejudices and moral certainties in a wider tide of sympathy as characters entangle themselves in wretchedness, so it is not the mistakes that hold us, but what you might call the low-key heroism of doing wrong while trying to do right. New Zealand fiction doesn’t always take us so starkly into this moral web.” – Vincent O’Sullivan, Launch of Strip, 25 October 2016