Indelible Ink:
a novel
Overview
Marie King is fifty-nine, recently divorced, and has lived a rather conventional life on Sydney’s affluent north shore. Now her three children have moved out, the family home is to be sold, and with it will go her beloved garden.
On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo — an act that gives way to an unexpected friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys. Before long, Rhys has introduced Marie to a side of the city that clashes with her staid north-shore milieu. Her children are mortified by their mother’s transformation, but have their own challenges to deal with: workplace politics; love affairs old and new; and, of course, the real-estate market.
Written with Fiona McGregor’s incisive wit and keen eye, Indelible Ink uses one family as a microcosm for the changes operating in society at large. In its piercing examination of the way we live now, it is truly a novel for our times.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Paperback
- 198mm x 128mm
- 464 pages
- 9781922070623
- AUD$29.99
- 30 September 2013
Categories
Awards
- Winner of the 2011 Age Book of the Year Award
- Shortlisted for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award
- Shortlisted for the 2010 Indie Book Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2011 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards
Praise
'The best domestic novels use characters in a specific family or social setting to reflect and explore the values and issues of a particular time and place. Indelible Ink, which follows the intersecting lives of one Sydney family during the last days of the Howard era, is such a book — and looks set to be the most talked-about Australian novel since The Slap.'
'For a long time now, when people ask me a favourite Australian author, invariably I think and say Fiona McGregor. There is a gutsiness, a splendour and command of language and expression in her writing that thrills me every time I read her. Indelible Ink is a stunning book, a novel that addresses our world and our time with an acute and ferocious acumen. There is also tenderness here and there is wisdom. Marie King, the grandmother who begins to understand living and courage with her first tattoo, is destined to become one of the great characters of Australian literature. This is a superb book by — undeniably now — one of our finest writers.'
About the Author
Fiona Kelly McGregor is a Sydney writer and performance artist. She has published five books, four of which have won or been shortlisted for major prizes, including the Steele Rudd Award for the story collection *Dirt* (originally published as *Suck My Toes*). Her most recent novel, *Indelible Ink*, won *The Age* Book of the Year, and was published by Atlantic in the UK.
McGregor contributes essays, articles, stories and reviews to a range of publications. Her performance work has been seen internationally. She is currently working on a new novel.