By: Kate Grenville Publisher: Canongate U.S. Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Canongate U.S. Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 352 Publication Date: April 21, 2006
The Orange Prize-winning author Kate Grenville recalls her family's history in an astounding novel about the pioneers of New South Wales. Already a best seller in Australia, The Secret River is the story of Grenville's ancestors, who wrested a new life from the alien terrain of Australia and its native people. London, 1806. William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, is deported to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. In this new world of convicts and charlatans, Thornhill tries to pull his family into a position of power and comfort. When he rounds a bend in the Hawkesbury River and sees a gentle slope of land, he becomes determined to make the place his own. But, as uninhabited as the island appears, Australia is full of native people, and they do not take kindly to Thornhill's theft of their home.
The Secret River is the tale of Thornhill's deep love for his small corner of the new world, and his slow realization that if he wants to settle there, he must ally himself with the most despicable of the white settlers, and to keep his family safe, he must permit terrifying cruelty to come to innocent people.
Whisked through a portal in time Each time I opened Ms. Grenville's novel, I stepped backward in time. Her attention to detail saturated each page without leaving the reader suffocated. I shivered in London's biting cold and then melted under Australia's harsh sunlight. Her protagonist was all too human while all of her characters had mindsets appropriate to the period -- not marred by hindsight. I would, will and have recommended this book to everyone and anyone. Fabulously done!
The Secret River Great book. A sound historical baseline brings the reader from the Thames to the land down under through the eyes of a boatsman who does what he has to do to survive and care for his family. In the process, he gets sentenced to death, commuted to a Sydney Penal colony in his wife's custody, endures social injustice as a felon, eeks out something resembling freedom only to pervey social injustice against the aborigines of the Autralian back country.
Poetically penned in a font easy on 50 year old eyes. I have gifted this book to several good friends and they have enjoyed it immensely.
A gripping novel that draws you in I loved this book. I read it very quickly because it was so hard to put down. Kate Grenville writes beautifully and captures the magic of the Australian landscape.
The story is about William Thornhill who is sentenced to life as a convict in Australia in the early 19th century. The first part of the book concerns his life in Georgian England. He is born into abject poverty and although he tries to make an honest go of it, circumstances lead him into crime. He is convicted of theft and his sentence is to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. His wife and child accompany him. This part of the book is a little slow, but the momentum picks up once they get to Australia, about 75 pages in.
In Australia, Thornhill discovers that the new country represents a blank slate where he can re-invent himself and break out of the cycle of poverty and crime that he has come from. He quickly wins his freedom and seizes the opportunity to get his own land and create his own farm, staking a claim to 100 seemingly vacant acres of land. However this brings him directly into contact (and potentially into conflict) with the native Aboriginal people.
The book is beautifully written. It really takes you into the world of early colonial Australia and gives you a sense of how difficult a life the early settlers had. The tension builds and builds as it become obvious that some kind of conflict between Thornhill's family and the Aborigines is inevitable. It made me understand the way that good people can be conflicted about what the right thing to do is. Different settlers in the area make different decisions and as you read the book, it you wonder how you would have acted in the same circumstances. But aside from the moral dilemmas, it's just a good story: a man trying to create a new and better life for himself and his family, overcoming many hurdles and setbacks, and gradually realising that the biggest threat of all is right in front of him.
Confronting and totally draws you in This is a superb book of the trials and tribulations that the early settlers faced when arriving in the newly "discovered" Australia. I won't revisit the plot and characters, as other reviewers have done this admirably, but will note that the story and the characters are entirely believable, and that the twists and turns that the plot takes could have their origins in a history book of early white settlement in Australia.
What makes this book so believable and therefore so confronting, is the dawning realisation of the main character Will that the "blacks" with whom he shares his land are indeed fellow human beings who have claims to the land, and who are inextricably linked with it the way he and his family will never be. However, it is fear for his family, whipped up by other far less sensitive souls along the river, which drives him to the horror that has so blighted early Australian history.
White Australians (and I am one of them) have over time found the history of their ancestors' dealings with the first people somewhat confronting and contraversial, and I imagine that this fine book will once again rekindle the debate relating to the occupation of a land that was home to thousands of people who were one with the land and regarded it as their mother.
That aside, it is a fine book, well written, with believable characters that the reader comes to care for. It leaves you wondering how people can live with themselves, as Will himself wonders in the last few chapters. It is a different book, apparently inspired by Ms Granville's research into her own family origins, but will resonate with anyone who lives in a country where they and their ancestors were not the original inhabitants.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
