# Surrender (novel) > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Surrender_(novel) > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Surrender_(novel).md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(novel) > Source revision: 1356489593 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) Novel by Sonya Hartnett Surrender First edition Author Sonya Hartnett Language English Genre Novel Publisher Viking Penguin (Australia) Publication date 2005 Publication place Australia Media type Print (Hardback, Paperback) Pages 248 ISBN 0-670-02871-1 OCLC 156765183 ***Surrender*** is a novel written by the award-winning [Australian](/source/Australia) novelist, [Sonya Hartnett](/source/Sonya_Hartnett). It was first published in 2005 in Australia by [Walker Books](/source/Walker_Books). It is narrated by twenty-year-old Gabriel, who is dying, and twenty-year-old Finnigan, a homeless boy who is Gabriel's only friend. ## Plot Seven-year-old Anwell lives in a prestigious but coldly distant family with a mother who is always sick and a father who punishes him with physical abuse. Anwell has no friends and is on a very tight leash. He is sitting in the back yard one day when he meets wild boy his age named Finnigan, his alter-ego or second personality. Anwell now named Gabriel is never ready to be angry and never to fight. Finnigan always ready be angry and to fight. If Gabriel (Anwell) wants revenge or anything bad done, he asks Finnigan to do it for him. Finnigan becomes Anwell's only friend, and Anwell confides in him what he has never told anyone else, of how he accidentally killed his handicapped older brother Vernon. His brother, though he was three years older than Anwell, "was never the elder of us". His parents, disgraced and humiliated by Vernon, refuse to take care of him, leaving Anwell to do the job at the young age of seven. Enjoying his task, Anwell routinely feeds, washes, and entertains his brother. One Sunday, while his father is out to church and his mother is sleeping due to a migraine, Anwell is again taking care of Vernon. When Anwell is trying to feed Vernon, he refuses, would not stop crying, and scratches Anwell on his cheek, drawing blood. Out of frustration, and anxiety their mother will wake up and be irate, Anwell puts fabric in Vernon's mouth to quiet him and throws his brother in a refrigerator. Finnigan becomes the town arsonist, lighting the town aflame piece by piece in an act of revenge for Gabriel, but Finnigan is soon out of control and the only way for Gabriel to stop Finnigan is for Gabriel to kill himself at the young, "martyr's age" of twenty by condemning himself to a mentally caused illness. ## Author's Summary As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years, which have been clouded with frustration and humiliation. A small town and distant parents ensure that he is never allowed to forget the horrific mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends - his dog, Surrender, and the wild boy, Finnigan, with whom he made a boyhood pact. When a series of arson attacks grips the town Gabriel realizes how dangerous Finnigan is and that only the most extreme measures will rid Gabriel of him for good. ## Awards Surrender received recognition as a 2007 Best Book for Young Adults from the American Library Association [1] and was a [Michael L. Printz](/source/Michael_L._Printz_Award) Honor Book.[2] ## References 1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** American Library Association (2007). ["2007 Best Books for Young Adults"](https://web.archive.org/web/20110213181734/http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/annotations/07bbya.cfm). Archived from [the original](http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/annotations/07bbya.cfm) on 2011-02-13. Retrieved 2011-02-03. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** American Library Association (2010). ["Michael L. Printz Winners and Honor Books"](https://web.archive.org/web/20110208112010/http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/printzaward/previouswinners/winners.cfm). Archived from [the original](http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/printzaward/previouswinners/winners.cfm) on 2011-02-08. Retrieved 2011-02-03. v t e Works by Sonya Hartnett Picture books The Boy and the Toy (2010) Come Down, Cat! (2011) Junior fiction The Silver Donkey (2004) Sadie and Ratz (2008) The Children of the King (2012) Teen and young adult fiction Wilful Blue (1994) Sleeping Dogs (1995) The Devil Latch (1996) Princes (1997) All My Dangerous Friends (1998) Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf (1999) Thursday's Child (2000) Forest (2001) Surrender (2005) The Ghost's Child (2007) Butterfly (2009) The Midnight Zoo (2010) Adult fiction Trouble All The Way (1984) Sparkle and Nightflower (1986) The Glass House (1990) Black Foxes (1996) Of a Boy (2002) Landscape with Animals (2006) Golden Boys (2014) v t e Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction 1985-1989 Antipodes by David Malouf (1985) Illywhacker by Peter Carey (1986) Second Sight by Janine Burke (1987) Holden's Performance by Murray Bail (1988) Captivity Captive by Rodney Hall (1989) 1990-1999 Oceana Fine by Tom Flood (1990) Still Murder by Finola Moorhead (1991) Double-Wolf by Brian Castro (1992) After China by Brian Castro (1993) What I Have Written by John A. Scott (1994) Dark Places by Kate Grenville (1995) Camille's Bread by Amanda Lohrey (1996) The Drowner by Robert Drewe (1997) The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan (1998) Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald (1999) 2000-2009 Out of Ireland by Christopher Koch (2000) True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001) Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan (2002) Shanghai Dancing by Brian Castro (2003) Slow Water by Annamarie Jagose (2004) Surrender by Sonya Hartnett (2005) Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (2006) Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (2007) The Spare Room by Helen Garner (2008) The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (2009) 2010-2019 Truth by Peter Temple (2010) That Deadman Dance by Tim Scott (2011) Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears (2012) Coal Creek by Alex Miller (2014) To Name Those Lost by Rohan Wilson (2015) The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau (2016) Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain (2017) Australia Day by Melanie Cheng (2018) The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida (2019) 2020–present Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas (2020) The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay (2021) Smokehouse by Melissa Manning (2022) Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (2023) Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (2024) Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane (2025) Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry (1985–present) Authority control databases Open Library --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Surrender (novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(novel)) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(novel)?action=history)). 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