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Sofie Laguna

Author of Too Loud Lily

24 Works 1,323 Members 44 Reviews

About the Author

Sofie Laguna was born in 1968 in Australia. She graduated from Victorian College of the Arts in 1992. She went on to earn her Diploma of Arts from RMIT University. Her book title's include My Yellow Blanky, Bill's Best Day, Too Loud Lily, and Big Ned's Bushwalk. She was shortlisted for the Stella show more Prize 2015 and the Voss Literary Prize with her title The Eye of the Sheep. This same title also won the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2015. She will be featured at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2015 program. In 2018, she won the Indie Book Award for Fiction with her book, The Choke. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: Sofie Laguna, Sophie Laguna

Image credit: Brigid Arnott

Series

Works by Sofie Laguna

Too Loud Lily (2002) 576 copies
The Eye of the Sheep (2014) 174 copies
One Foot Wrong (2008) 142 copies
The Choke (2017) 125 copies
Infinite Splendours (2020) 47 copies
Meet Grace (2011) 38 copies
Bad Buster (Nibbles) (2003) 32 copies
Bird and Sugar Boy (2006) 26 copies
A Friend for Grace (2011) 25 copies
Grace and glory (2011) 23 copies
A home for Grace (2011) 22 copies
My yellow blanky (2002) 18 copies
On our way to the beach (2004) 18 copies
Surviving Aunt Marsha (2005) 14 copies

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Members

Reviews

A Hippo likes to loud and learns when it is appropriate to be loud.

Located in Lessons bin
 
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B-Chad | 9 other reviews | Jun 29, 2023 |
Thirteen year old Justine lives with her grandfather on a small block near the Murray River. Her favourite hideaway is The Choke, a narrow stretch of the river where flood waters can build up until the banks burst. She is nearly friendless and has undiagnosed learning difficulties, so her refuge at The Choke is a great comfort to her.

Justine is occasionally visited by her ne'er-do-well father who spends most of his time away from home involved in criminal activity. Her Pop is convinced that her father went bad when his mother died; Pop gets the blame, but it's not clear why.

On a visit home, Justine's father commits a crime and the consequences are visited upon Justine. Her life is in tatters, she is alone and exploited, before she makes a stand.

This is another excellent outing from Sofie Laguna. Justine is a highly empathetic protagonist, and her relationship with the disabled Michael is beautifully handled. About my only reservation with this book is that there are a few ends left dangling that I would have preferred be clarified.
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gjky | 4 other reviews | Apr 9, 2023 |
It's no surprise that, at a time when domestic violence is becoming a prominent social and political issue here, a novel set in a Melbourne household dominated by an abusive father wins the Miles Franklin Award. The Eye of the Sheep has a lot more going for it than mere topicality; it's a profoundly original and affecting book.

The story unfolds as observed by Jimmy Flick, a tearaway 11 year old who suffers from an unspecified disorder (seemeingly ADHD or something similar). He cannot control his behaviour and is not in touch with his emotions.

Jimmy narrates his family life in the inner suburb of Altona, living with his older brother Robby, their obese mother, and his father, who works at the nearby refinery. From the outset, it is clear that Jimmy's behavioural disorder exasperates his father, and only his mother is able to deal with him - barely. Jimmy's artless narration recounts how bottles of Cutty Sark disappear and the consequences, especially on a Friday night. When Jimmy's father is retrenched, things get worse and the tensions within the family erupt.

Laguna's narrative voice captures perfectly the sense of a child struggling to make sense of almost everything, but especially what is going on right in front of him. Situations that Robby sees clearly are incomprehensible to Jimmy, more so as things become ever worse.

I probably won't be the first to liken this book to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time but I think the similarities are limited. This book is more serious in intent than Haddon's, and Laguna carries it off. There are some points where she gives way to her instincts as a children's author, with things threatening to get a bit Tom Sawyerish towards the end, but she does not go in that direction, fortunately.

The Eye of the Sheep paints a very affecting picture of domestic violence, without being polemical. Laguna is sympathetic towards the abusive Gavin, and shows how he is also a victim. As the story unfolds we also see glimmers of how this behaviour persists through the generations.

I would give this book 5 stars, except that I though Laguna overdid it a little by giving her supposedly backward narrator a vocabulary and a degree of insight that I thought was pretty unrealistic at times, for an 11 year old boy with learning difficulties. That occasionally jarred, but otherwise this is a very fine novel.
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gjky | 7 other reviews | Apr 9, 2023 |
Laguna is a beautiful writer. She evokes character with insight and authenticity. But this story is unremittingly tragic. Even the brief moments of joy are undermined by evident immorality. Easy to read: hard to read.
 
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PhilipJHunt | 2 other reviews | Feb 24, 2023 |

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Andrew McLean Illustrator
Kerry Argent Illustrator

Statistics

Works
24
Members
1,323
Popularity
#19,431
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
44
ISBNs
119
Languages
5

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