A gripping novel that draws you in

books:


	• The Secret River Kate Grenville Canongate U.S., 2006 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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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.

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A Howard Fast Immigrant tale?

This is a book and review that I am quite ambivalent about. I had a rather strange response to this book which won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize. The subject, the convicts who settled Australia has always been of interest to me and yet I found the book less than compelling. Its separate parts all seemed so predictable and unexciting; the characters appeared to be more props to serve as metaphors for the overall telling of the historical experience. It has a structure that turns to a monotony of this happen to Thornhill, and then this happens next with some overly "flowery" language thrown in. You know just where the plot is going and nothing surprises you. Yet, overall, I must admit the book did provided and interesting overall experience upon reflection. One of my big issues with the story is that it is so epic in nature as it is really a complete fictional biography of its major character William Thornhill. Thornhill is born poor in London, meets girl (a rather too perfect girl too), marries, gets an opportunity to succeed but is put down by the class system, is caught stealing, convicted, sent to Australia where he and family begin a new life. He then develops a lust for land, and finds the "blacks" stand in his way. The books third person narrator attempts to explain and justify Thornhill's decisions and motivations. But these came to me as a bit cliché.... Bottom line, A lust for land over all else. Each part of the book is increasingly better than the prior parts with the last two parts the most satisfying. I kind of liked the epilogue style ending. It is interesting to note that so many Amazon reviews gave this book 5 stars which it makes me wonder what other Novels they are comparing it too. It would be my recommendation to pick this up if your interested in a Howard Fast immigrant tail, but you would be better served by reading Robert Hughes's, THE FATAL SHORE.

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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 audio CD

This is a splendid book and the audio CD version has an award-winning male narrator.
I highly recommend it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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.

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