Description of book
Victoria Morrell was once a great artist. She led the high life - living and working in Paris, mixing with the artists of the Surrealist movement. Her work was largely forgotten in the fifties and sixties, but was rediscovered in the seventies when she became something of a cult figure on the London art scene. She now lives as a recluse in Hampstead, London. And she is dying.
Anna Griffin is the young woman commissioned to write a biography of Victoria's life. In many ways their lives strangely intersect, since they grew up in the same mining town and share preoccupations with underground spaces, deserts and the many forms of grief.
In a compelling double narrative, Gail Jones tracks Victoria's past as it intertwines with Anna's life. The stories Victoria tells enable both women to enter into new forms of sympathy and understanding.
Elegant, enthralling, and emotionally charged, BLACK MIRROR is both a novel of love and family mystery, and a meditation on the nature of artistic vision and obsession.
Reviews
“Black Mirror shows the beauty of things in dislocation, the wonder of the ordinary. The pompous `secret' of surrealism is unmasked, simple allegory can sometimes be more profound than obscure metaphor. The real story BLACK MIRROR reveals is that of the deeper links between Anne, Victoria and the community of their town in the desert. “
Tim Coronel is the editorial coordinator of AB&P.
PRAISE FOR SORRY
‘Gail Jones’ sixth novel is an elegantly written lament for lost opportunities, both for its characters and a wider, national failure.’
THE AGE
‘One of the most interesting and talented novelists at work in Australia today.’
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Set in outback Western Australia during the second World War, Gail Jones’ Sorry explores the strange, intense, deadly conformation of a ‘ruined family’. Perdita, whose name indicates that this is the story of a lost child, is forced to deal with loneliness, the obsessions of others and the false consolations of withdrawal from the world. Yet some around her are ‘given to the marvel of things’. There is some prospect of reconciliation between individuals and races in this unusual, disturbing, highly-wrought fiction.
FICTION JUDGING PANEL COMMENTS - PRIME MINISTERS LITERARY AWARDS 2008
PRAISE FOR SIXTY LIGHTS
‘Wonderfully written passages... it’s when Jones’s ability as a stylist come together with her intelligent and intensely visual imagination that her fiction becomes truly illuminating.’ - Sydney Morning Herald
‘There is an intelligence and honesty to her writing that brings the characters powerfully to life.’ - The Age, Melbourne
‘A moving and captivating story... a feast for lovers of language.’ - Melbourne Times
‘Jones’s imagery is evocative... wonderful turns of phrase.’ - The Bulletin
PRAISE FOR DREAMS OF SPEAKING
"If a good novelist makes us look at everyday subjects in new ways, then Jones is an excellent one, and Dreams takes flight, skipping from descriptions of sound waves to Cellophane with bravura flair." - TIME magazine
‘Jones is an extraordinary writer no matter what genre she is working in, and often breaks new ground in her treatment of her subject matter, but this novel strikes the most successful balance I've seen in her work so far between intellectual complexities, on the one hand, and simple narrative seductions, on the other side.’
Australian Book Review