This book is so hard for me to rate - on one hand Sonia Hartnett's writing is stunning and I love how this is like an Aussie version of Faulkner's The Sound and the fury, one of my all time favourite novels. I'd go as far to say that Hartnett's writing is right up there with the greats. I just found that firstly, this story is incredibly brutal and unrelenting to the point that I had not much heart at the beginning to want to keep reading. Don't get me wrong - I like dark books (The Sound and th...

I am at a loss for words. This was a gritty and brutal look into a damaged family. Both mentally and physically damaged, the Willow's are at the same time inexplicably close and immensely lonely beings. The glimpse into their lives is tragic and taboo, covering a raft of events that all lead to a horrific conclusion.I shudder to think that there are families like this out there, but know, sadly, that there are. This book, which is deliciously written, will leave you feeling dirty for having read...

A short powerful novel that tests the boundaries of what is a family, an individual's role in the community they live in and what happens if a system, although seemingly weird, is tampered with.The Willow family is unusual, living in a derelict farm that offers new meaning to a farm-stay. The father is a brute and rules his tribe with an iron hand. The eldest Edward seems to run the farm and does have some interaction with the local town. 23 year old Michelle and the dreaming, artist 20 year old...

Australian author Sonya Hartnett’s dark YA novella Sleeping Dogs (Penguin Random House 1995) is a compact, precise and unsettling depiction of a family bound by secrets and violence, and their disturbing encounter with a stranger. The Willow family scrabbles to exist on their ailing farm, their house deteriorating, the five children wary and careful, the mother almost catatonic and the father ruling the roost with an iron fist. Tourists in caravans stay for the summer season, but when artist Bow...

This is well-written, but the writing style had the effect of distancing me emotionally from the characters and events in the story. (view spoiler)[Consequently, when the inevitable tragic ending happened, I was irritated and vaguely dissatisfied rather than saddened. (hide spoiler)]

Genre: YAIs it the main pairing: YesIs it canon: YesIs it explicit: NoIs it endgame: NopeIs it shippable: Not particularly but there are interesting facets to their relationshipBottom line: Borrow it from the library but don’t pay cash money for itThe Willow family lives on a farm in the ass-end of nowhere and it ain’t no picturesque farm either: “Farms are places for working, not preening.” They work from sunup till sundown and they none of them have friends but they do have a pack of dogs. The...

I am a big fan of Sonya. She's an amazing Australian writer. This book was similar yet so different from the book I have previous read by Sonya. It seems like every time she writes a book she takes it up a notch.This book hit me at my heart because it's about country kids in Australia. I am a country kid is Australia. It's a very confronting book that touches on a lot of issues that arise when you remove the outside world from young people's lives and replace it with an unhealthy obsession with

They say that you should let sleeping dogs lie and this is certainly the case in Sonya Hartnett’s Sleeping Dogs, a novel that tells the tale of the Willow family, a rather secluded family living an isolated life on their farm, avoiding contact with the outside world, save a few campers stopping to spend the night at their caravan park. The Willows are strange and bizarre, but it is the way that Harntett writes of them as though they were normal that makes the novel so stunning. Right from the be...

And that’s yet another book by Sonya Hartnett that really shouldn’t have sat in the “children’s” section of the bookshop. Incest, domestic violence, animal cruelty, you know all that good stuff you find on Play School. I’m all seriousness though, it is good stuff. I absolutely love everything I read from Hartnett (as an adult) and this book was no exception. The only thing that made me rate this book 3.5 stars is my lack of connection to any of the characters. I felt sorry for Jordan but that’s

The Willow family lives in squalor on a farm/trailer park. Griffin, the father of the clan, is a violent, controlling man who has cowed his wife and 5 children into accepting that there is no life worth living beyond their the farm's borders. When a stranger enters their world, a horrible secret is revealed, resulting in terrible violence."We must be ruthless," Edward snarls, "because we lead ruthless lives ... This is our existence ... this house, this land, that father, that mother - there's n...

A very powerful novel about a family who has isolated themselves on a farm. The mother has withdrawn and the father is abusive, towards one son in particular. The children only spend time with each other and there is an incestuous relationship between one of the sisters and brothers. To make money their farm doubles as a caravan park and when a man named Bow Fox arrives trouble begins for the family. The ending is brutal and breathtaking.

Abrupt and vicious, this story, if fleshed out could have really been something. The complexity of the characters, their demons and their ghosts are overshadowed by the mechanics of plot. Why the author provides only a brief painful glimpse of this family eludes me, why throw back the big fish with the hungry looking on?Having said that - well worth the read, still plenty to admire, even if it is the potential that excites.

This book is short, and dark, and I love it. This is the second Hartnett book I've read. Even though it's real downer, it is also incredibly exhilirating. Hartnett's prose is sharp and clean and methodically used to illustrate a darker portrait of family that is typically held back from the young adult reader.

This was the first Sonya Hartnett that I ever read...and what a story to begin with! The Willow family is isolated, disfunctional and violent, and Hartnett sucks you into their world with vehemence and skill. This novel left me breathless.Addendum: I reread this during a couple of Wide Reading session this year and it still has immense power and all the feels. Amazing writing.

I don't know what I think about this book.

Audio book downloaded today - 4 hours long and I listened to it in one sitting. The narrator is stunning. She projects the right amount of menace and weirdness with each character. The writing is evocative as well as detailed without being wordy. This has so many strands woven into it of family loyalty, family violence, incest, dysfunction and the contradictions of what normality should be. Hartnett has a wonderful writing style that packs a punch in every sentence. This family is screwed up for...

I remember reading this as a wee sub-16 year old. For a week or so after I finished it, I was in a dark mood, thinking very dark thoughts. I couldn't shake the disgusting tainted feeling I got from it for that whole week, as if I was somehow affiliated with the characters and was partly responsible for their actions, because I was witness to them and did nothing to stop them. Whenever I entered the library and saw the copy of this book, it was like it was black hole waiting to suck me up, and I'...

Sleeping Dogs was simultaneously incredibly easy and incredibly difficult to read. It told a tale of such a deeply disturbing family dynamic with a harrowing lack of closure. You are presented with an off putting world and the unsettling allusion to a number of stomach plummeting themes.It’s these hints and subtle cues to the disturbing truths that transpire within the Willow family and the poison they infect others and themselves with.The ending left me feeling a sort of morbid emptiness and a

Amazing writing on a tragic theme.

Just gut wrenching. Oh my god.

Loved this book when I was a teenager and love it just as much now

A brooding, delirious story about isolation, abuse, family and a strange who thinks he knows best

Like a train building momentum to the inevitable end.

Super intense. It's a mix of The Hills Have Eyes, Flowers in the Attic, and Dracula. Very uncomfortable but very well-written.

There wasn’t a single likeable character in this novella and I still gave it 4 stars. A memorable & quick read.

One of my favourite authors but this book is very dark and violent.. I loved the writing but didn't like how the story evolved.

This really was a waste of my time to read. Incest, opression and childkilling. Horrible book. Ughhhh

Hauntingly beautiful and bleak, this story stays with me. What does it mean to be loyal to your family? To a way of life? To love? What might it cost?

Yes, I'm not-so-slowly working my way through Hartnett's oeuvre. This is one of her earlier titles, and it's fairly obvious. The characters aren't as richly drawn as in her more recent books, and her language isn't as poetic. It's still recognizably her, but somehow this novel feels like a prototype for the far-superior Thursday's Child--the same bleak landscape and poverty-stricken farm, a similar dysfunctional family. Somehow, though, despite the absence of any small feral child digging subter...

Oh Sonya...Hartnett invites us to a decaying Garden of Eden where the Willow family lives and where sin is somehow innocent ... the result is unforgettable." - Robert CormierThis is the third book I've read by her and I am a fan (the other two were Surrender and Thursday's Child, both five stars). This was the saddest of the three. You hope things end well for the Willows... My god, how you hope things end well for these Willow kids. Sonya gives you a little glimpse of hope to then completely cr...