Along the way we learn how hard people work to get by and how the priveliged just don't get it. Lucy is a smart girl, and ends up on top in more ways than one. This little group have the 'entitlement' phenomenon right here. Here we see some horribly self absorbed, pretentious and downright horrible nasty teenagers, preening themselves and cunningly trying to make everyone bow down to them. This is an insightful story told to us from a young girl, Lucy, who at fifteen years of age earns a scholarship to a prestigious girls school. Her family has worked hard in silence with doors shut and blinds pulled down tight. I was not surprised to hear that Alice works in the area of wage fairness as a solicitor. The main subject I took from this is the issue of 'outworkers' and the extreme hard work of those that need to do this and work very very hard to earn such little pay. Here is a piece of fiction, but knowing some of this author's background, this stuff is real. Signed copy was unexpected but great!Īlice Pung is a young woman with a vast cultural history and a very important story. Thank you Goodreads for my signed copy and my first 'First Reads' win. She lives with her husband Nick at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne, where she is the Artist in Residence.
It was published in the UK and USA in separate editions and has been translated into several languages including Italian, German and Indonesian.Īlice’s next book, Her Father’s Daughter, won the Western Australia Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the Victorian and NSW Premiers’ Literary awards and the Queensland Literary Awards.Īlice also edited the collection Growing Up Asian in Australia and her writing has appeared in the Monthly, the Age, and The Best Australian Stories and The Best Australian Essays.Īlice is a qualified lawyer and still works as a legal researcher in the area of minimum wages and pay equity.
Alice is the oldest of four - she has a brother, Alexander, and two sisters, Alison and Alina.Īlice grew up in Footscray and Braybrook, and changed high schools five times - almost once every year! These experiences have shaped her as a writer because they taught her how to pay attention to the quiet young adults that others might overlook or miss.Īlice Pung’s first book, Unpolished Gem, is an Australian bestseller which won the Australian Book Industry Newcomer of the Year Award and was shortlisted in the Victorian and NSW Premiers’ Literary awards. Alice’s father, Kuan - a survivor of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime - named her after Lewis Carroll’s character because after surviving the Killing Fields, he thought Australia was a Wonderland. Alice was born in Footscray, Victoria, a month after her parents Kuan and Kien arrived in Australia.
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