Gail Jones' Black Mirror consists of two interwoven stories.
Gail Jones' Black Mirror consists of two interwoven stories.
Gail Jones' Black Mirror consists of two interwoven stories. The first is that of a rebellious young woman from the outback who ends up among the surrealists in 1930s Paris; the second of Anna, who travels to London from the West Australian mining town they both hail from in order to interview the now elderly and reclusive expatriate Victoria Morrell for the biography she is trying to write. Black Mirror is rich in intertextual allusion. Morrell, whose name invokes Ottoline Morrell, muse of the English modernists, resembles Leonora Carrington's Marion Leatherby from her autobiographical novel The Hearing Trumpet. The first few chapters alone contain echoes of Joyce, Faulkner, Andre Breton and (those oft-quoted cultural exemplars) Cold Chisel. Jones' use of language is deft even when she is not alluding to others' texts. 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.