The Topp Twins’ memoir Untouchable Girls awarded bestselling NZ title at 2024 Book Industry Awards

They’re known for their music, comedy performances and their activism - now the Topp Twins, Dames Lynda and Jools, can add ‘award-winning authors’ to their list of achievements.

Over the weekend, they were awarded the Nielsen BookData NZ Award for the best-selling New Zealand title at the 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Book Industry Awards for their 2023 memoir Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins’ Story .

Speaking to the Herald ahead of accepting their award at a ceremony in Auckland over the weekend, the sisters revealed it means all the more to them because it’s thanks to the countless New Zealanders who have bought and read their story.

“It just really gives us a sense that we’re still loved and remembered,” Jools tells the Herald.

“We haven’t sung for such a long time - we’ve been out of action and I still have treatment every four weeks to stop my cancer from spreading, and so our lives have changed quite considerably.

“We still have cancer, but we just take each day as it comes. We’re both pretty good at the moment.”

In 2022, the twins revealed that they were both undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Jools was first diagnosed in 2006, but her cancer returned in 2021 when her beloved sister Lynda was also diagnosed with the disease. Since then, they haven’t been able to perform as often as they’d like.

“We’re usually in front of a big crowd, performing and dressing up and having all our characters and everything, so this was a whole new ball game for us to write the book,” Jools reveals.

“And it was a lovely process because we were apart from each other - Lynda was in the South Island and I was in the Far North.”

It was Lynda’s task to make a timeline of their lives - as her sister says, “When you talk about an autobiography, it’s usually just one person, it’s not two people trying to write the book, because it could have been messy!

“We would just ring each other and we’d pick a year. I’d say, ‘I want to write about 1962′. And she said, ‘I’ll write about 1978 or 1981′ and there were some years that were really big and other years that we had to Google because we didn’t even know what had happened.

“But we’ve lived the same life, we’re still living the same life where everything we’ve done, we know the beginning and the middle and the end of every story that’s in our book, both of us together. We were always on tour together, we were always at the protests together, singing the protest songs, we were writing music together.”

As Lynda notes, while the book is the story of their lives, “it’s not just our story”.

“A lot of people were involved in that book, in helping us write it and everything - but also all the stories about the political days.

“There were lots of people involved in the Springboks and nuclear free [protests] and the Reclaim the Night marches and homosexual law reform. So it’s nice that it’s out there and lots of people got to read it.”

It’s not just the bestseller lists that show how Kiwis feel about the book, as the twins reveal they’ve had plenty of messages from readers.

“I got an amazing letter,” Lynda shares. “It was beautiful, and they’d written ‘Jools and Lynda’ and they’d intertwined the Lynda with the Jools like a little piece of art.

“It opened up saying, ‘I’ve just finished reading your book. And I I’ve managed to pluck up the courage to finally write to you and tell you how much you have been a part of my life. And what you’ve done is made me stronger’, and all that kind of stuff.

“I was reading and I’m thinking, ‘This is amazing. This is some young woman who’s finally decided that she’s going to tell the world who she is’. And then it was signed at the bottom, ‘92 years old’,” Lynda laughs.

“And I’m going, how amazing is that? How one book, Untouchable Girls, managed to make a 92-year-old woman brave enough to write to us. I just thought, that’s the best letter I’ve ever read in my life, you know?”

Lynda reveals the pair are planning to be able to take to the stage again soon.

“We’re going to do some gigs in 2025, we’ve already got a couple all lined up for the summer.

“So we’re hoping that, you know, we’ll be fit and well and happy and ready to go. We probably won’t be going on a big national tour or anything like that, because Jules has to get her injections in her bum every four weeks in Auckland.”

“I never look forward to that - I never wake up on the day and go, ‘woohoo, it’s injection day!’” Jools laughs.

“But my injections are keeping my keeping my cancer stabilised, so it’s a bit of a no-brainer. I’m just going to keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore and the doctors say that at some point in time the cancer might outsmart my next bit of treatment they’re trying to give me.

“But I’m handling it really well and I don’t feel like I’m unwell because of my treatment. We’re just going to wait until the winter’s over [to perform]. It’s just a bit cold for us old ladies now.”

- Written by Bethany Reitsma via the NZ Herald and republished here with permission.