Golden Boys
Aug 2014 · Penguin Group Australia
3.8star
4 reviewsreport
eBook
224
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About this eBook
With their father, there's always a catch . . .
Colt Jenson and his younger brother Bastian have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts – toys, bikes, all that glitters most – and makes them the envy of the neighbourhood.
To Freya Kiley and the other local kids, the Jensons are a family from a magazine, and Rex a hero – successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure in a different way: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives?
Sonya Hartnett's novel for adults is an unflinching and utterly compelling work from one Australia's finest writers.
'Golden Boys has a line-by line brilliance that is startling ... [Hartnett] is one of Australia's most penetrating analysts of the travail and turmoil of families, especially as witnessed and suffered by the young.' Weekend Australian
'Sonya Hartnett is that rarest and most precious of writers: a reverse Peter Pan.' Saturday Paper
'A web in which it is a pleasure to become entangled.' Saturday Paper
'Succinct and vivid.' The Age
'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
Colt Jenson and his younger brother Bastian have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts – toys, bikes, all that glitters most – and makes them the envy of the neighbourhood.
To Freya Kiley and the other local kids, the Jensons are a family from a magazine, and Rex a hero – successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure in a different way: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives?
Sonya Hartnett's novel for adults is an unflinching and utterly compelling work from one Australia's finest writers.
'Golden Boys has a line-by line brilliance that is startling ... [Hartnett] is one of Australia's most penetrating analysts of the travail and turmoil of families, especially as witnessed and suffered by the young.' Weekend Australian
'Sonya Hartnett is that rarest and most precious of writers: a reverse Peter Pan.' Saturday Paper
'A web in which it is a pleasure to become entangled.' Saturday Paper
'Succinct and vivid.' The Age
'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
Ratings and reviews
3.8
4 reviews
About the author
Sonya Hartnett's work has won numerous Australian and international literary prizes and has been published around the world. Uniquely, she is acclaimed for her stories for adults, young adults and children. Her accolades include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Of A Boy), The Age Book of the Year (Of A Boy), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (Thursday's Child), the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for both Older and Younger Readers (Forest, The Silver Donkey, The Ghost's Child, The Midnight Zoo and The Children of the King), the Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Surrender), shortlistings for the Miles Franklin Award (for both Of a Boy and Butterfly) and the CILP Carnegie Medal (The Midnight Zoo). Hartnett is also the first Australian recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2008).
Golden Boys, Sonya’s third novel for adults, was shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She also published her fourth picture book, Blue Flower, illustrated by Gabriel Evans, in 2021 and it was shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award.
Golden Boys, Sonya’s third novel for adults, was shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She also published her fourth picture book, Blue Flower, illustrated by Gabriel Evans, in 2021 and it was shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award.
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