AustLit

In 2008,Sonya Hartnett received the prestigous Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for her innovative and impressive oeuvre of work and her latest novel Butterfly is on the shortlist for The Age Literary Prize, 2009. MacDonald pays tribute to Hartnett as an 'immense talent and an astute observer of characters and the spaces they inhabit' (16) and gives a detailed account of the novel's story, which revolves around characters who 'share a mutual loneliness' and must 'shed skins and facer greater truths about themselves' (17). He argues that Hartnett's 'luminous lnaguage' is what saves the story from 'being a depressing read' and instead finds the text 'intriguing and beautifully written...a novel of nuance and shade, ultimately about metamorphosis, potential and change'. For MacDonald 'the novel lingers when the final words are read' because the story highlights how 'few things are truly worth wanting' and challenges the reader to 'deteremine what those few things are' (17).