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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'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.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Also published in sound recording format.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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From Innocent to Evil: The Representation of the Child in the Works of Gail Jones
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 126-147) -
Shirley Hazzard’s Australia : Belated Reading and Cultural Mobility
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2010; This essay examines Shirley Hazzard’s representation of and reception in Australia by returning to her 1984 Boyer Lectures, arguing that from the perspective of twenty-five years hindsight, they provide a useful contribution to recent conversations about the critical location of Australian literary culture in international contexts, including in particular, the cosmopolitan. In attending to the operations of time and space in Hazzard’s account of her contemporary world, this ‘delayed’ reading of the lectures provides for a more complex understanding of her significance in the contemporary field of Australian literary studies, arguing that in its striking presentation of Cold War locations and events, Hazzard’s work stages a decided move away from the specifically colonial frames that organise Australian cosmopolitanism, and that in this, her work generates a distinctive form of cosmopolitan cultural mobility, and as a consequence a distinctive perspective on Australia. (Author's abstract) -
Mirroring, Depth and Inversion : Holding Gail Jones’s 'Black Mirror' Against Contemporary Australia
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Studies in English , vol. 35 no. 2009; 'Gail Jones's most recent novel, Sorry, has been readily embraced as the author's most probing consideration of the historical and contemporary treatment of Indigenous Australians by this country's federal Government. One critic noted that 'the word "sorry" has become so contentious in recent times that Gail Jones's decision to adopt it as the title of her fourth novel must be interpreted as a political statement', whilst another pronounced the novel 'Gail Jones's "sorry" to her aboriginal compatriots'. At the same time, however, the existing body of criticism regarding Jones's previous novel, Black Mirror, has almost entirely side-stepped a close examination of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within the text. I argue that Black Mirror foregrounds the need to rectify past and present injustices and the importance of Indigenous Reconciliation through the filter of the surrealist art movement. I examine how Jones develops these themes, focusing first on the reality of war-torn Europe, second on the historical perspectives offered by non-Australian characters, and third on the political dimensions of the human body. It is through these visual and profoundly emotional foci that Jones sustains an enduring, haunting sense of incompleteness throughout the text, and fosters a broad, national imperative to 'unconceal' existing black holes in Australia's history. In doing so, Black Mirror calls for a politically active Australian populace and highlights the negative consequences of collective political detachment and complacency on Indigenous issues.' (Author's abstract)
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Miles Ahead of the Rest
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 7 June 2008; (p. 26-27) -
Spatialising Experience : Gail Jones's Black Mirror and the Contending of Postmodern Space
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 23 no. 2 2007; (p. 58-73)
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In Retrospect
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 248 2003; (p. 39)
— Review of Black Mirror 2002 single work novel -
Eerie Surreal Verisimiltude
2002-2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Island , Summer no. 91 2002-2003; (p. 81-83)
— Review of Black Mirror 2002 single work novel -
Booking the Best
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 6 September 2003; (p. 1-2)
— Review of The Hamilton Case 2003 single work novel ; Pushing Time Away : My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna 2003 single work biography ; Black Mirror 2002 single work novel ; Wings of the Kite-Hawk 2003 single work autobiography ; The Point 2003 single work novel -
Yearning for Difference
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 174 2004; (p. 135-137)
— Review of Father Lands 2002 single work novel ; Black Mirror 2002 single work novel -
[Review] Black Mirror
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , August vol. 82 no. 2 2002; (p. 34)
— Review of Black Mirror 2002 single work novel -
All Bets Off at Writers' Rave
2003
single work
column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 4 February 2003; (p. 6) -
Literary Mirror a Witty Reflection
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Australian , 2 May 2003; (p. 18) -
Tampa Proof? Australian Fiction 2002-2003
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 48 no. 2003; (p. 159-174) -
Cosmopolitan Australians and Colonial Modernity : Alex Miller's Conditions of Faith, Gail Jones's Black Mirror and A.L. McCann's The White Body of Evening
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 49 no. 2004; (p. 122-137) Robert Dixon says 'In this paper I want to test the proposition that there is a new generation of "cosmopolitan Australians"'. -
'Art Is the Windowpane' : Novels of Australian Women and Modernism in Inter-war Europe
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 3 no. 2004; (p. 159-172)
Awards
- 2003 shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize
- 2003 winner Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
- 2002 winner Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Fiction
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Paris,
cFrance,cWestern Europe, Europe,
- Kalgoorlie, Goldfields area, Southeast Western Australia, Western Australia,
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London,
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,