Black Glass: A Novel

Description

Sisters Tally and Grace have always dreamed of moving to the city: a bright, glamorous world full of luck and promise. Yet neither of them ever expected to be living there broke, homeless and alone as happens when they become separated after an accident. As undocumented people ('undocs'), the sisters are now confined to life's shady margins, where they encounter a range of memorable characters. But the city, increasingly dominated by surveillance, segregation and civil unrest, is more dangerous than they imagined. Now they must struggle to find each other or just to survive.

Authors Bio, not available

"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." --Andrew Wrathall, Bookseller & Publisher "Meg Mundell creates an eerie vision of an Australian city (it sounds a lot like what once was Melbourne) in her chilling debut novel, where we follow the lives of the two itinerant sisters." --Julia Ross, Courier Mail "A strong debut." --Herald Sun "[An] impressive debut...It's a bleak, recognisable vision of a possible tomorrow and Mundell colours it with imagination and intelligence...Black Glass is made of stimulating, satisfying stuff." --Gerard Elson, Readings Monthly "It's the unsettling combination of the known and the unknown that gives Mundell's work a real edge...Black Glass is thoughtful, intelligent fiction." --Sophie Cunningham, Readings Monthly "Black Glass is a convincing piece of probable dystopia, ingeniously designed to save some of its best blows for the end. And the survival skills and no-nonsense voice of Tally are a pleasure to follow." --Nicholas Reid, Sunday Star Times "It is a Melbourne that keeps us absorbed all the way to the novel's denouement. As in much speculative fiction, Mundell's aim is to warn us against destructive trends in contemporary society. What, she asks in this lively debut novel, are we becoming?" --Rjurik Davidson, The Age "Mundell's debut novel Black Glass is wrought from a minimally tweaked reality in the all-too-near future...the novel also deals meatily with social engineering, economic segregation and the decay of news media...[it] is the arrival of a brave new voice to tweak Australia's literary scene." --Hamish McDougall, The Australian "Mundell's Melbourne is always intriguing, as the real and the imagined coalesce." --Colin Steele, The Canberra Times "In her brilliant debut novel, Mundell envisages a dark, sinister city of the not-too-distant future where massive surveillance and controls are used to crush citizens into submission." --Carlene Ellwood, The Mercury "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 "Brooding, surreal and unsettlingly vulnerable, Black Glass marks the arrival of a striking new voice. A brilliant debut." --James Bradley "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