4 min. There are clear and deliberate parallels to Australia's outrageous treatment of refugees in this book and its a brilliant mix of plot and politics.Just finished Meg Mundell’s The Trespassers (UQP 2019), which I read obsessively and breathlessly in almost one sitting. The ways that hierarchies sharpen into focus and blur away during emergencies are brilliantly draw, as is the slow bubble of rumour and innuendo that driveI loved this fast-paced, tense story about refugees, xenophobia, fear and authority.
It's classic dystopian fiction that also works on an allegorical level as an account of Australia's relationship with refugees. But as the journey unfolds strange things begin to affect the migrants and no-one can figure out their origin.
Synopsis: Two dysfunctional couples rent a modern luxury desert home for the weekend hoping to sort out their messed-up lives. There’s plot and there’s politics as Mundell draws parallels with our treatment of refugees. It was surreal reading this amidst current times, if not because the dystopian setting is all too plausible. A book that’s published in a 2019, a book recommended by a celebrity you admire, a book featuring an amateur detective, a book told from multiple character POVs, a book by an author whose first and last names start with the same letter, a book with a two-word title, read a book during the season it is set in.What better time to read a novel set in a modern pandemic? It started to fall apart when the ship makes it to Australia and they all languish onboard waiting for something in the plot to push the story on, then it finishes, rather abruptly with one character written out and only one character given voice to how he feels in the end. Following the perspectives of Billie, who becomes a makeshift nurse when a deadly virus hits the ship, Tom, a teacher who falls ill, and Cleary, a vulnerable deaf boy who witnesses something terrible, the reader feels the tension build. 7/31/2020 2:28 PM PT 7/31/2020 3:21 PM PT
But when a crew member is found murdered and passengers start falling gravely ill, the Steadfast is plunged into chaos. What better time to read a novel set in a modern pandemic? TRESPASSERS is a new IFC Midnight horror movie. When a virus breaks out on the journey south, everything gradually starts to fall apart. The reader could be forgiven for thinking the book was set in the late 1800s, until, just a few paragraphs in, she writes, "Only one toy per child, and no devices - they were banned," that you realize that the book is not set in the past, but in a dystopian near future, where the English are fleeing disease and poverty and trying to emigrate to Australia.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2019 Verified Purchase Meg Mundell's wonderful book The Trespassers starts with an emigration scene, as poor English and Irish families crowd onto a giant ship.
Her second novel, THE TRESPASSERS (UQP), will be out in August 2019. I loved the way the author left many aspects of the story, particularly the events that led to people migrating to Australia, somewhat ambiguous, leaving the reader to come to their own conclusions. Hoping for better lives and escaping from the world's economic hardships, climate disasters, and feared pandemics, their journey on the raging sea threatens their very survival. For nine-year-old Cleary Sullivan, deaf for three years, the journey promises adventure and new friendships; for Glaswegian songstress Billie Galloway, it’s a chance to put a shameful mistake firmly behind her; while impoverished English schoolteacher Tom Garnett hopes to set his future on a brighter path.
Kylie Jenner Trespasser's Gonna Do Time in Lockup.