The Incomparable Sonya Hartnett reviewed by Linda Newbery
Hartnett, who earlier this year won Sweden's Astrid Lindgren memorial award, has the keen eye and freshness of vision to make the most ordinary event spring off the page. The flames of a gas fire "jump up like can-can dancers". Peake, the dog, has "treacle-coloured eyes, and a spiky moustache of wet whiskers after rummaging in the grass". The rhythms of her prose ask to be read aloud, always a test of good writing. "How does one craft sturdy happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as a life?" Maddy wonders as a child. "Is love the answer, or freedom from love?" Can a busy life compensate for searing loss? It's a story that seems bigger than its generously spaced 192 pages, and the stylised illustrations by Jon McNaught - waders silhouetted on a shore, dolphins thronging in a yacht's wake, a cloud of butterflies - add to the sense of travelling through a world both familiar and strange.
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