Guest of the ilb 2002
Sonya Hartnett
was born in 1968 in Melbourne, Australia where she still lives
today. The media specialist published her first novel, 'Trouble
All the Way' at the age of 15 and has written around twenty variously prize-winning novels since then which have received several prizes.
For her young people’s novel 'Wilful Blue', she received a grant
from the 'Literature Board of the Australia Council' in 1992 and in
1996, the 'IBBY Ena Noel Award'. Her young people’s novel,
'Sleeping Dogs', an oppressive psycho-profile of a disturbed farmer family, only focused on itself against a background of oppressive
heat, animal stench and hard work, was her literary breakthrough.
For this novel she received the 'Victorian Premier’s Literary
Award Sheaffer Pen Prize' in 1996 and in 1999 she was nominated
for the 'German Youth Literature Prize'. After 'Thursday’s
Child' (2002) which was compared to the big novels of Steinbeck and
Faulkner, and recognised with the Aurealis Award (2000) as well as the
Guardian Children’s Literary Prize (2002), Hartnett published her
second novel for adults, 'Of a Boy' (2002), which was awarded the
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2003.
Sonya Hartnett is in the meantime regarded as one of the most important protagonists
of the young generation of young people’s book authors. A
characteristic of her work is her portrayal of down to earth reality
which she combines with elements of the 'Gothic novel' and 'magical
realism'. Her writing is influenced by Ivan Southall, Robert
Cormier and the big Russian narrators.
While in 'Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf' (1999) it is the legendary
Tasmanian Tiger which keeps both the heroines, Satchel and Chelsea, in
suspense, in 'Forest' (2001) it is from the viewpoint of the animals
themselves from which Hartnett develops her stories. Powerful and
poetic, more ballad than prose
writing, this story stands in the tradition of 'Watership Down' and
'Animal Farm'. Precisely told and with great empathy, Hartnett
describes in an elegant, poetic pictorial language, the odyssey of
three cats: Kian, Jem and Cally who, after the death of their mistress,
find themselves again in the inhospitable surroundings of the forest.
Sonya Hartnett’s books are provoking
and controversial. Without any false consideration to social
taboos, she throws a clear view on topics such as family breakdown,
aggression, suicide, incest, obsession and loneliness. Only
rarely are her stories harmoniously resolved. In her prize
awarded youth novel 'Sleeping Dogs', she reflects the tortuous
atmosphere on the run-down farm of the Willow family where the violent
father leads a hateful and authoritarian regiment. Only the love
to his sister Michelle, allows Jordan, the black sheep of the family,
not to despair at the brutal beatings of his father until one day a
stranger enters the world of the Willows and brings it out of
balance. The ending of this novel leaves the reader alarmed and
quite helpless. The author dares what many would not: to leave
things without any evaluation, reconciling conclusion or moral message,
and with this she attributes her young readers with a degree of
perception, maturity and ability to judge.
“Princes” (1998) tells the unsettling story of the
apparently peacefully cohabiting twins Indigo and Ravel, who have lived
outside of society in an almost derelict house since the baffling
disappearance of their parents. The first born, Indigo, who is
seemingly more able to cope, is fully at the mercy of his obsessions
and tries to kill his withdrawn brother with rat poison. The up until
then unconditional trust is destroyed after this attempted murder and
soon allows Ravel to make an appalling discovery. The idea of split
personality is carried to extremes by Hartnett – she allows her young
readers to look again into the abyss of the human soul.
Her most recent publications include the
children’s book “The Silver Donkey” (2004) as well as the teenagers’
novel “Surrender” (2005), which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary
Award 2005, the prize of honour at
the Michael L. Printz Award and was nominated for the Dublin Literary
Award 2007. In 2007 her erotic novel “Landscape with Animals” was
published under the pseudonym Cameron S. Redfern. As one of the "most
important innovators of the modern novel for young readers", Hartnett
was awarded the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Prize for Children's
and Young People's Literature.
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