Reading Sonya Hartnett’s Golden Boys is unnerving, an experience akin to treading deep water. Everything above the surface appears calm, but there’s the lingering sensation that anything could be lurking below. And as I made my way through this novel, my heart was in my throat, the tension palpable.

Reminiscent of Butterfly, her brilliant 2009 novel, Golden Boys is an emotionally charged and subtly crafted work about the particular angst of childhood and adolescence. When the Jensons move into a working-class neighbourhood, the other families are entranced by their charm and wealth. Yet, from the opening scene, it’s clear that the father’s fascinating veneer is not all it appears. Throughout the novel, Rex’s real form is just beyond our gaze, and much like something slippery in the water might brush against your foot, this form emerges fleetingly – as accusation but never fact. The truth remains ambiguous and it’s precisely this unknown that makes reading Golden Boys so tense and frightening. Hartnett’s villains are not cartoonish; rather, they are shapeshifters from fairytales. Is Rex monstrous, or misunderstood? Did your foot touch a piece of ocean debris or something far more sinister?

In the midst of this uncertainty, the children in the community of Golden Boys devise their own rules – rules constructed from a naive logic and a warped sense of fairness that insists if something bad happens then somebody must be punished. When one character learns her parents likely married because her mother fell pregnant with her, she readily accepts responsibility for their unhappy lives now. As with her previous works, it’s Hartnett’s clear-eyed depiction of this simultaneous brutality and sensitivity of children that I found most gripping. The intimate yearnings and injustices these children feel so keenly are cleverly located within larger issues of class, religion and family. Golden Boys is a powerful novel.

Bronte Coates