Past Event

Black Glass by Meg Mundell

10th Mar 2011

Presenter: Scribe Publishing
Website: http://www.scribepublications.com.au/
Event Duration: 120 minutes

Join us when Tony Birch launches Black Glass, the debut novel by the super-talented, Meg Mundell.

Tally and Grace are teenage sisters living on the outskirts of society, dragged from one no-hope town to the next by their fugitive father. When an explosion rips their lives apart, they flee separately to the city.

The girls had always imagined that beyond the remote regions lay another, brighter world: glamorous, promising, full of luck. But as each soon discovers, if you arrive there broke, homeless and alone, the city is a dangerous place — a place where commerce and surveillance rule, and undocumented people like themselves are confined to life’s shady margins. Now Tally and Grace must struggle to find each other — or just to survive.

Narrated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Black Glass is the work of an exceptional new talent.

Shortlisted for the CAL/Scribe Fiction Prize 2010

'Black Glass presents a dark urban dystopian future of mass surveillance and government control, filled with corruption and morality gone wrong ... Black Glass contains a mix of writing styles, adding to the big brother style of the book ... The tension builds right until the end. FIVE STARS', Andrew Wrathall (Bookseller & Publisher)

'I loved Black Glass. Tally - garrulous, resourceful and scared - is a wonderfully convincing child character whose voice I have missed since finishing the book. Meg Mundell skilfully exposes the manipulation and paranoia beneath the city of the future's gloss, and the marginalised existences of those excluded from the brave new world.' Catherine O'Flynn

‘Black Glass is a superb debut novel. Meg Mundell has invented a compelling futuristic version of our urban world that is not only original but — like all great speculative fiction — frighteningly recognisable. In addition, she has populated it with a cast of charismatic characters, notably the resourceful sisters Tally and Grace — truly an endearing and heroic pair.' Chris Womersley