Sonya Hartnett – April 11 2021

Child Abuse Prevention Month – April

Sonya is a writer of stories for adults, young adults and children. She studied media at university and worked in a bookshop for many years. Her first book, Trouble All the Way, was written at age 13 and published when she was 15. In 2000 and 2003, she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelists of the Year. Sonya writes under the names Sonya Hartnett, S. L. Hartnett, and Cameron S. Redfern and her subject matter often deals with issues such as murder, lost children, poverty and depression. Her books have been published in Australia, Europe and North America. Two of her novels, The Silver Donkey, illustrated by Don Powers, and Wilful Blue, have been adapted for the stage. Sonya has written her memoir, Life in Ten Houses: A Memoir and contributed to There Must Be Lions: Stories about Mental Illness with Nick Earls and Heide Seaman. Sonya has won numerous Australian and international literary prizes and in 2008 became the first Australian recipient of the Swedish Arts Council’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the biggest prize in children’s literature.

Golden Boys
Penguin Australia, 2014; ISBN 9781926428611
Colt Jenson and his younger brother Bastian live in a world of shiny, new things – skateboards, slot cars, train sets and even the latest BMX. Their affluent father, Rex, has made sure that they’ll be the envy of the new, working-class suburb they’ve moved to. But underneath the surface of the perfect family, is there something unsettling about the Jensons? To the local kids, Rex becomes a kind of hero, but Colt senses there’s something in his father that could destroy their fragile new lives.
“A fine portrait of the charming predator.” – West Australian
“An absorbing, fiercely elegant and tangibly believable novel that raises questions about our responsibility to bear witness – and details the complex obstacles to doing so.” – Australian Book Review

Of a Boy
Viking Press, 2000; ISBN 9780670040261
The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog; he’s afraid of quicksand and self-combustion. Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighbourhood children might set out to buy ice-cream and never come back home.
“Hartnett’s work is a gem, the climax as taut as a thriller and . . . heart wrenching” – Weekend Australian
“Effortlessly moving form matter-of-fact to mystical, at times exquisitely painful to read, Of a Boy is an almost suffocatingly powerful evocation of the emotional life of the very young . . . [for] anyone who recalls being a child. And everyone who doesn’t.” – Sydney Morning Herald