The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville - 2008

My great thanks to Max u for The Amazon Gift Card that allowed me to read Kate Grenville’s marvellous trilogy, set in the Sidney, Australia area in the Convict Era.

 The Secret River is about a convict and his wife who rose from abject near slavery to affluence while enduring great hardship.  Sarah Thornhill takes us twenty years ahead, focusing on the youngest daughter born in Australia and raised in comfort.  There is a rich vein of material for those interested in Australian colonial history, with a wonderful treatment of the relationship of the colonists to the  indigenous inhabitants.

The Lieutenant has no direct plot ties to the other two books in the trilogy.  Based on a real person, William Dawes. The novel tells the story of a young Englishman who, in 1788,ships out in a fleet of eleven vessels taking a first load of convicts to New South Wales.  Made a Lieutenant his job is to be the astronomer for the fleet and charged with studying the stars from the Southern Hemisphere.  He is an socially awkward young man, more interested in mathematics and the stars than his fellow travellers. His early years are very interestingly depicted.

We learn a lot about life in the colony.  Food is a big problem at first.  The  indigenous dwellers seem like little more than children, though potentially dangerous ones, to most of the English.  The heart of the story is the relationship, purely platonic of the astronomer to a young indigenous girl.  He begins  to learn her language and teach her English.  His fellow colonists see the natives as almost subhuman while the Lieutenant discovers a language as subtle and powerful as that of “Homer and Sophocles.” (He knew five languages including Greek and Latin.). He comes to see they employ concepts beyond those of the basically uneducated English in the colony. He begins to keep notebooks in which he records his findings about the language.  He slowly develops a friendship with the young woman.  His fellow officers scoff when he denies a sexual element in the relationship.  

There are a number of minor characters including a writer, the governor, other officers, indigenous Australians, memories of his family back in England. The girl reminds him of his young sister.  

The close of the novel, a wonderfully done close, took me totally by surprise.

All these books will be loved by anyone into quality historical fiction, especially anyone interested in Australian history.

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville- 2011 - A Sequel to The Secret River

My Post Upon The Secret River by Kate Grenville

My great thanks to Max u for The Amazon Gift Card that allowed me to read this book

Sarah Thornhill is a sequel to The Secret River.  It focuses on the born in Australia last daughter of William Thornbill and his first wife.  You should for sure  read The Secret River before Sarah Thornhill.  The Secret River is a significantly better work, the prime driver in Sarah Thornhill, for me, was to see what will happen to the Thornhill family.  I really enjoyed the sequel, relaxing my literary standards a bit.

William Thornhill was transported to Australia in 1806 for petty theft.  His wife and young child were sent out also.  We follow them through trials and tribulations as hard work and determination raise the family to affluence and five more children are born, all in New South Wales.

In both novels Grenville does a wonderful job describing the Australian countryside.  She masterfully depicts the impact the settlers and the aboriginal people have upon each other.  There are not enough Australian Women so lots of settlers get involved with native women, some in a kind and loving way, others brutal and cruel.  By the time Sarah is in her teens mixed race children are common.  Sexual contact with native men by white women is deeply frowned upon.  Blacks, as they are called, are viewed by most as savages, thieves, beggars, drunken near beasts.  Some settlers pity them and give them food, others see as dangerous vermin.  Almost no one sees them as equals.  The very last thing William Thornhill and his new wife wanted was for Sarah to get involved with a man of mixed blood.  Grenville helps us see the very real traditions of the natives.

It was great fun to see William Thornhill now the lord of the manor.  His first wife died before this book began and he has remarried.  His new wife is a bit snobbish, wanting to hide the convict roots of the family.  Sarah and her siblings receive no formal schooling.  She never learns to read.  She is maybe 12 when we  meet her, girls grow up fast there,  she has her first period, her older sister Mary helps her.  Her sister tells her this means she can have a baby now.  When she asks how this happens Mary tells her like with the horses and dogs.  This is not much of a turn on for Sarah.  Her body develops curves.  The outdoor physical life is good for children, way better than London.  

In this novel we see the boys mature, the brother who left, Dick, plays a very important part in the story line.

I do not want to reveal a lot as the plot has simply a number of unanticipated turns.  The characters are very well developed.  The ending was really interesting.  It was a lot of fun to read.

As I suggested, first read A Secret River, then Sarah Thornhill.

There is a third novel Grenville set in Australia thirty years earlier, The Lieutenant I hope to read soon.

Mel u

In one line I loved Sarah Thornhill days New South Wales is such a healthy place a doctor would starve, a far cry from the slums of London!

The Secret River by Kate Grenville- 2005

Great thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Card that allowed me to read The Secret River

A Great Reading Life Idea from Buried in Print

When Buried in Print, whose literary book blog  I have happily followed for years,suggested I read The Secret River by Kate Grenville I read the description on Amazon and at once hit the purchase now button.  The Secret River turned out to be one of the most interesting, exciting, insightful historical novels I have read in a long time.  It can be read for sheer enjoyment and as an in depth view of early days of the English occupation of Australia, showing the terrible hardships faced by the early transported convict settlers and devastation this wrought on the aboriginal inhabinets, there long before recorded history anywhere.

The opening chapters reminded me of Dickens.  Our lead character William Thornbill is raised in poverty. He luckily gets a position as an apprentice boatmen on Thames.  He functions like a water cab, taking what he calls the gentry to the theater and such.  He also takes freight loads.  Grenville vividly brings to life just how hard this work was.  The Apprenticeship is for Seven years.  When it ends all seems going well for him, he marries for mutual love Sal, the daughter of his boss, who gives him his own boat as a wedding gift.  I very much was in sympathy with William and Sal but i knew something terrible was going to happen and it does!  Grenville shows us how precarious life was for most people at that time in London.  The account of how he and Sal and their baby get transported to Australia is just so marvelous.

The trip to Australia takes nine months, during this time women and children are kept seperated from men.  The arrival in Australia is so wonderful.  Upon arrival convicts were assigned to settlers, Sal was not a convict, most of women were London streetwalkers, so her husband is assigned to her.  Sal and William have a wonderful and loving relationship, staying bonded through very bad times.

Three years go by, another baby born.  We really get the feel for convict life.  Sal starts a pub in their house.  One of customers is an aborigine, terribly addicted to drink who dances for the customers.  There is just so much to like sbout this book!

William buys on credit a good sized boat, sets up an hundred acre holding in the country on a river.  He makes good money with his boat.  The settlers live on grounds overlapping native grounds.  The ablrginals seem to have no notion of property, gobabout to unclothed, steal and can be killers with their Spears.  Grenville’s treatment of the encounters between the two very different cultures is brilliant.  I understood the fear of the settlers.  The settlers range in attitude to those who see the natives as vermin to a man in deep sympathy for them who has a child with native woman.

Horrible violence is done on both sides.  

The Thornbill’s have several more children.  They grow up strong in the Australian bush.

Grenville’s description of natural and animal life is a joy.  The Thornbills end up being quite fond of roasted kangaroo!

There are numerous minor characters.  Each one developed 

perfectly.  The Thornbill’s children can be seen as the first generation of Australia born English.  

The Secret River is first rate historical fiction.  Americans and Canadians can relate their history to Australia.  

This is part one of a three part trilogy set in Colonial Australia.  I will soon read Sarah Thornbill, about the last child of the Thornhills, as a young woman raised in comfort with servants in a Villa where there once was a mud hut.

I endorse this for all lovers of historical fiction.

I loved The Sacred River.  

Mel u