Wilful Blue

by Sonya Hartnett

A chilling, subtle, deeply absorbing mystery. Seven gifted young artists are collected together in a monastery. But tensions build, and death follows.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction

Paperback

First published June 6, 1994

About the author

Sonya Hartnett (also works under the pseudonym Cameron S. Redfern) is, or was, something of an Australian child prodigy author. She wrote her first novel at the age of thirteen, and had it published at fifteen. Her books have also been published in Europe and North America. Her novels have been published traditionally as young adult fiction, but her writing often crosses the divide and is also enjoyed by adults.

"I chose to narrate the story through a child because people like children, they WANT to like them," says Sonya Hartnett of THURSDAY'S CHILD, her brilliantly original coming-of-age story set during the Great Depression. "Harper [the young narrator] is the reason you get sucked into the characters. Even I, who like to distance myself from my characters, felt protective of her."

The acclaimed author of several award-winning young adult novels--the first written when she was just 13--Australian native Sonya Hartnett says she wrote THURSDAY'S CHILD in a mere three months. "It just pulled itself together," she says. "I'd wanted to set a story in the Depression for some time, in an isolated community that was strongly supportive. Once the dual ideas of the boy who tunneled and the young girl as narrator gelled, it almost wrote itself--I had the cast, I had the setting, I just said 'go.' " Accustomed to writing about edgy young adult characters, Sonya Hartnett says that identifying with a seven-year-old protagonist was a challenge at first. "I found her difficult to approach," she admits. "I'm not really used to children. But once I started, I found you could have fun with her: she could tell lies, she could deny the truth." Whereas most children know "only what adults want them to know," the author discovered she could bypass that limitation by "turning Harper into an eavesdropper and giving her older siblings to reveal realities."

In her second book with Candlewick Press, WHAT THE BIRDS SEE, Sonya Hartnett once again creates a portrait of childhood. This time the subject is Adrian, a nine-year-old boy living in the suburbs with his gran and Uncle. For Adrian, childhood is shaped by fear: his dread of quicksand, shopping centers, and self-combustion. Then one day, three neighborhood children vanish--an incident based on a real case in Australia in the 1960s--and Adrian comes to see just how tenuous his safety net is. In speaking about Adrian, the author provocatively reveals parallels between herself and her character. She says, "Adrian is me in many respects, and many of the things that happen to him happened to me."

Sonya Hartnett's consistently inspired writing has built her a legion of devotees. Of THURSDAY'S CHILD, Newbery Honor-winning author Carolyn Coman says, "Hartnett's beautifully rendered vision drew me in from the very start and carried me along, above and under ground, to the very end. This book amazed me." The achingly beautiful WHAT THE BIRDS SEE has just as quickly garnered critical acclaim. Notes PUBLISHERS WEEKLY in a starred review, "Hartnett again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale. . . . Sophisticated readers will appreciate the work's acuity and poetic integrity." Sonya Hartnett's third young adult novel, STRIPES OF THE SIDESTEP WOLF was named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults.

Sonya Hartnett lives near Melbourne, Australia. Her most recent novels are SURRENDER, a mesmerizing psychological thriller, and THE SILVER DONKEY, a gently told fable for middle-grade readers.

Reviews

[Mengki Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was 15 years old, and it began a love affair with Sonya Hartnett's writing for me. The character of Guy (disillusioned, detached, but not without humanity and a sort of gentleness) resonated with my disenfranchised young self. I'll leave off writing a synopsis, suffice it to say this is a sad, strange, sweet book that somehow makes a lot of sense.

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jesse and Walt have been selected, along with four other local artists, to spend five weeks at a soon-to-be artists' retreat in a former monastery. Their purpose is to create works of art to decorate the place--photographs, sculpture, paintings, murals. It is this last that Jesse is commissioned for, along with the introverted Guy. But as the summer draws to a close and their mural nears completion, Guy has grown increasingly distant and maudlin.

That's all in the past, now, and in the present day, Jesse and Walt are having beers with Guy's sister, who wants to know everything about her brother's last days, up to and including his death, which police have ruled an accident.

It makes me sad to declare this decidedly mediocre, but that's what it is. Written before Hartnett had really settled into the gorgeously poetic style she has now, this is a bit of a mash-up between expository statement and forced metaphor. The subject matter smacks of being written by a 25-year-old who thinks she has a great deal more life experience than she does, and what could be the moving story of tragedy and grief is labored and unengaging. It's not a terrible book, but a fairly forgettable one.

Lastly, the typographer of this edition should be fired: the flashbacks, which comprise more than half the book, are set in a san-serif font. San-serifs are great for headlines, posters, billboards--things where you need bold, strong letters at a distance--but are hard to read as long paragraphs on paper. The eye requires a little something to help it break the lines down into separate letters. (This ends my geeky typography lecture. But really, WHO typesets half a book in a san-serif font?)

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a fan of Sonya Hartnett (I find her stories bleak and unpleasant) but I actually enjoyed this one, maybe because I read it guardedly, knowing what to expect and thus trying not to get too emotionally engaged with the characters. It also had a satisfying sense of completion.