Books like Sleeping Dogs

This book is so hard for me to rate - on one hand Sonia Hartnett's writing is stunning and I love how this is like an Aussie version of Faulkner's The Sound and the fury, one of my all time favourite novels. I'd go as far to say that Hartnett's writing is right up there with the greats. I just found that firstly, this story is incredibly brutal and unrelenting to the point that I had not much heart at the beginning to want to keep reading. Don't get me wrong - I like dark books (The Sound and the Fury is not exactly a box of rainbows), but a story that starts and continues with no hope makes me predict nothing but an ending with no hope and I didn't want to continue in this vein at all. Secondly, I found the turning point of the novel - the arrival of a stranger that turns the family's dystopian farm life upside down... trivial. Some childish things happen and the story ends. I was hoping for a turn of events that was say more... epic? Dramatic? Bigger in scope and depth? I'm not sure. I found the final closing sentences (and the imagined "dream ending sequence") very beautiful, but I just kept thinking that if a bit longer and fleshed out, this could have been quite the tome. Overall though, good.