The words are pouring out of Jodie Pascoe, she is desperate to get them down, to tell her story. She needs to describe her daughter Jade. The words are for her blind father, who always wanted her to “to tell him what was happening and what things looked like”. The words are for herself. The words are for the world – as words are increasingly all there is. Images are going, the gaps are multiplying. Jodie is telling the story of what happened, how the world started to fall apart.

The words for her is one of those wonderful books you read many ways. It is a sci-fi mystery, a who-done-it, and a thriller: “Who were we running from? What were we running towards?”. But it is also deeply disturbing social commentary. Telling the story of how increasingly we only exist as our digital images, we only exist online. A strange epidemic is spreading geographically and demographically – eventually reaching for the unborn and the dead. People are scared, and governments are scrambling to understand what’s happening. In the vacuum of scientific knowledge, the rumours start – spreading fear and uncertainty.

When I first started reading The words for her I was so full of questions, and just like the characters, I was impatient to know what was going on. But as the story progressed, I was continually surprised by the logical chaos that was unrolling once the ‘gaps’ appeared. International travel, law and order, politics, international relations, education, social cohesion, all fading away like the images in photographs and on video. Businesses closing with the collapse of international trade, and with the depletion of staff. All so reminiscent of the Covid responses around the world. “Everyone was turning inwards. Countries were turning inwards.”

And reminiscent too are the deep divisions within society. With the government responses to the ‘gone’ getting more and more oppressive. And the various responses from the affected; camps and refuges being set up – some as a way of supporting each other away from their increasingly hostile communities. Others becoming increasingly hostile themselves, “Gaps have rights too”. On the one side everyone is constantly taking pictures of themselves, their loved ones, each other – on the other are those carrying mirrors so they can at least glimpse their image occasionally.

A theme running through and driving the plot is the vulnerability of women. Their invisibility in society, their victimisation by insecure and controlling men: “I wanted him to look away, to stop seeing me so that he wouldn’t get angry”. Men who are willing to betray, who only look out for themselves. Contrasted with this is Jodie who would do anything to protect her daughter Jade from whatever it is that’s happening to the world, who is trying to help her parents in the crisis. Jodie who has been speaking her words describing things to her father, who has been blind for 20 years. Jodie who uses the magic of words to hide behind, to confuse people.

“It felt like a contract had been broken.” The total disorientation of the events is captured well in this book. As is the power of language, how richly we could communicate if we wanted: “A word can mean too many things, a ‘star’ is a starfish, a light in the sky, and a necklace, and everyone sees something different in their mind.” But how vacuous we have become under the sway of social media. And the contract of a routine life is broken, as Jodie’s finances reach crisis point: “I looked up at the sky, holding back tears. Seagulls circled overhead.”

The thriller aspect of the book also works well. The breakdown of society coming closer to home for Jodie; a house ransacked, her car being followed, mysterious men asking about her. Jodie becomes suspicious of herself, of what she had done, as well as of everyone else. As histories become re-written, she increasingly worries about exactly what her friend Miri forced her to do that night on the beach …

The words for her is inventive, thought-provoking, engrossing and a really good read.