Sleeping Dogs

"The first time I read this I read it all in one go. I just could not stop reading it. The reason I chose it is because I wanted to highlight books for young adults and teenagers that deal with the taboo subjects we are not supposed to talk about. People say, ‘oh, children’s books shouldn’t talk about this, they mustn’t explore violence and such things.’ Yet children’s books do confront difficult subjects and they always have. “It makes you question what things are about. It isn’t an easy read and it doesn’t offer any easy answers” Sleeping Dogs is, I think, a most beautiful and shocking book. Can I read you just the first part? At first she thinks the weight is an animal of some kind, wandered into the room and drawn by the sight of her. It’s not for some moments that she realises it’s Jordan who has slipped uninvited into bed beside her. She closes an arm around his shoulder and without opening her eyes she’s knows what he’s wearing: overalls and nothing else. He’s been working early and smells of milk and hay. Though it is morning, the day is already hot. She can feel the warmth sunk through his skin, and she knows the caravans will be flaring in the sun, the dam glittering like a diamond, the trees bowed breathless, but her bedroom is dark and chill, dewy with its own shade. She knows that Jordan is stealing time, has planned and plotted this moment of quiet between them, and she curls her hand around his, lets his hair tickle her face without becoming cross for it. He lies still for a minute or more, and then sits up on an elbow so he can kiss her and look at her face and touch her closed eyes. He whispers, “Happy birthday, Michelle.” And then he is gone, leaving her in the same dreamy state that he’d found her. Now you read that far, which is the second page, and it is such a touching, gentle love and eroticism – a beautiful passage of writing. And then the next line is: And then he’s gone, leaving her in the same dreamy state that he’d found her, but awake enough to wonder if any other brother or sister will remember that today she turns twenty-three. Now, that one phrase! It could read “if any brother or sister will remember” but it’s that one word “any other brother or sister”. Hartnett’s control of her prose is quite brilliant – her understanding of love, emotion and taboo. As a reader you are completely engaged with Jordan and Michelle and what befalls them, all the horrific things that happen through the novel. There you are, you are on the side of a taboo, an incestuous relationship. It makes you question what things are about. It isn’t an easy read and it doesn’t offer any easy answers. I’ve run over this lots and lots of times in my mind over the years. I know it’s about genetics, it’s about malformation, it’s about insanity to do with this incestuous relationship, but then you’re still thinking, wow, this is the truth. So that was why I chose it. A truth about what matters through life. What keeps them going is love. The mother has been destroyed by the father – she is in a constant state of depression. The father—you pick up a detail that he’s been in the Vietnam war—is dreadfully damaged. Their home and their whole world is one of decay and destruction. And the one moment of peace in this novel is one which you’re not allowed to have, because it is not legitimate. I think that is a truth that makes you (the reader) think about society, about logic, about what our biology allows us to have, and what we should treasure."