I got stalked by a red-eyed sheep in the Faroe Islands a few months ago and it was disturbing. While Sofie Laguna’s The Eye of the Sheep is also unsettling, I think this year’s Miles Franklin Award winning novel is worth a date.
This is speed dating, okay? So, three questions …. three minutes … GO!
What world are you from?
The world of Jimmy Flick: he’s a young boy who is inventive, odd and a tad maddening and who has a unique take on his world and stressful circumstances. Jimmy’s mother Paula mostly does wonderfully well in managing his challenging behaviour and learning difficulties and in keeping him out of his father Gavin’s hair. But the stresses begin to tell on her and, sadly, this means Jimmy’s poor, working class family starts to seriously unravel. Jimmy then finds himself in tough circumstances in the wider world, where he muddles through as best as he can. Thankfully, one or two people—including a feisty girl called Dierdre and a prickly boy called Liam—end up being on his side.
The Eye of the Sheep is also from the world of theatre. Laguna says the book had its seeds in Difficult to Grow, a play she wrote 15 years ago about ‘a small, flighty man riding the edge of panic’.
What do you consider your best attributes?
Laguna tells Jimmy’s story pretty unflinchingly and, while this can be quite painful at times, she never trivialises this unusual boy or his plight. Gavin, with his Cutty Sark whisky, is believable both in his love for, and his violence towards, Paula. One of the best parts of the book is when Jimmy is defended by Dierdre—she really seems to ‘get’ Jimmy and we get a tiny sense of hope through this that, in the long run, he might be all right.
Chair of the Miles Franklin judging panel, Richard Neville, said, ‘The Eye of the Sheep is an extraordinary novel about love and anger, and how sometimes there is little between them.’ How about you take the book on a longer date and let me know if he’s right?
What’s your best chat up line?
I’m a silver tongue, so not a line but a couple of paragraphs … I climbed into the passenger seat and he got into the driver’s and we drove out of Altona along Sunbury Road. It was never just my dad and me. The sun streamed across our knees in a single ray. Dad drove the Holden faster than Mum. He grabbed the gears as if he was showing them who was boss. He was the Bill Philby of the gearbox. He turned the corners more quickly. He leaned back as if he was sure the car knew what to do. Mum drove leaning forward, as if she doubted it.
We drove into a road that said Bulla Tip and Quarry and the smell was sweet and rotten in my olfactory. Dad sniffed the air, grinned and said, ‘That’s how we know we’re in the right place, son.’
If you date books on their author credentials … Laguna has them in spades. She has written 20 children’s books, plays and a screenplay based on her first adult novel, One Foot Wrong, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin and shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in 2009. She also beat a strong Miles Franklin shortlist in 2015 that included Sonya Hartnett, Joan London and Craig Sherborne and debut novelist Christine Piper.
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SO … if you want a longer date with The Eye of the Sheep … here are the deets …
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