Customer Reviews

The Colour

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In THE COLOUR Rose Tremain creates a wonderful insightful portrait of individuals drawn into the lure of the New Zealand gold rush in the mid-19th century. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone immigrate to the south island of New Zealand with Joseph's mother Lillian in order to begin a new life on a farm in the untamed countryside. As the Blackstone family settles down to their new life it soon becomes apparent that Joseph and Harriet's marriage is not based on any deep sense of love or devotion. In fact, they are becoming increasingly emotionally distant from each other each day. In addition each is fleeing from a disturbed past in Norfolk, England. After their first year in their new homestead their lives are forever changed when one day Joseph spots a glimpse of the colour, a New Zealand euphemism for the glimmer of gold, in their creek. Keeping is discovery a secret from his wife and mother Joseph soon abandons his dreams of farming and joins the thrust of the gold rush occurring throughout the country in his dreams of striking rich and securing a better life. After he leaves his farm and heads to the west coast Harriet is not far behind with her own agenda.

This book is filled with wonderful images of the hard painstaking life of establishing a farm in the midst of the untamed New Zealand countryside. I felt sympathy for their ever-increasing struggles to remain on their farm. The descriptions of the harsh winters made me appreciate my warm apartment. One of the most interesting parts of this book dealt specifically with the gold rush. I was entranced by the descriptions of men buying mining licenses and claiming a spot of land in order to pan for gold while living in squalor - all the while clinging to the dream of striking rich and cashing in their fortunes. Also intriguing was the varied individuals who developed a business to accommodate the miners such as selling food, lodging, and sometimes their bodies. But despite my enjoyment of this section of this book, I was dismayed by the inclusion of the Maori woman and her connection with the little boy Edwin. Tremain appeared to feel a need to include a Maori storyline but it felt too forced for my own tastes. Furthermore, I felt the story of Pare didn't coincide well with the other storylines and her relationship with Edwin was eerie and unsettling. Regardless, THE COLOUR is a book that quickly grabs your attention and had me guessing the ending until the last couple of pages. I will definitely now read more books from Rose Tremain.

If stories were meals, this would be a roast dinner with steamed treacle pudding for afters! "The Colour" is a filling read.

Tremain has delivered a story with a stunning landscape - New Zealand in the gold rush - a strong, believable female main character, and a story arc that keeps you reading to the bitter, sad, yet liberating end.

Someone told me that a good book teaches you something concrete about life you didn't know when you read the spine. Tremain has taught me about the sharpness of grass, the fickle quality of gold and how to keep a cow warm.

Priceless.

Bunny

Set during the 1860s New Zealand Gold Rush, Tremain's elegant, passionate tale of a British emigrant couple's fresh start in the rural outback, grabs the reader from the first page with its effortless evocation of place and character.

Newcomer Joseph Blackstone has built his house in a summer spot, despite expert advice. As the season changes, he lies awake, worrying. "He rebuilt it in his mind in the lee of a gentle hill. But he said nothing and did nothing. Days passed and weeks and the winter came, and the Cob House remained where it was, in the pathway of the annihilating winds.

"It was their first winter. The earth under their boots was grey. The yellow tussock grass was salty with hail. In the violet clouds of afternoon lay the promise of a great winding sheet of snow."

With Joseph is his new wife, Harriet, 34, grateful to be saved from a stultifying spinsterhood as a governess, and his widowed mother, Lilian, who spends the cold days mending china, broken on its long journey from home. Uprooted, alienated by this inhospitable place, Lilian is miserable, but Joseph and Harriet both have ardent hopes.

Joseph has fled England with a terrible secret to put behind him. He believes that strong, capable Harriet will renew him "and living sensibly with her, without loathing and without damage, then, he believed, his past would slowly vanish. He would be able to grow old without it, just as, if a man is careful, he can grow old without yearning."

But, a product of his times as well as his nature, he begins by stifling Harriet's dreams, first refusing her desire to help in building the Cob House (a structure meant to be temporary, built of mud and grass), then denying her longing for a child. Though growing disappointed with her marriage, Harriet retains her optimism. She surveys her hard-won garden with satisfaction or looks out at the distant mountains with wonder and desire.

Then, during a thaw after a devastating snow storm, with Harriet gone to get help from their richer, more established neighbors, Joseph finds gold in their creek. It's not much, but it sends him into a frenzy of feverish work and secrecy. Instinctively he hides the dust he's found and takes pains to keep his work from Lilian and Harriet. Though he finds no more, his obsession builds and when gold is found on the other side of the mountains he seizes the chance to escape his failed life and eroding marriage.

The narrative continues to move between characters, primarily Harriet and Joseph, but also Lilian, and their neighbors, the Orchards. Tremain brings alive the privations, filth, obsession and excitement of the Gold Rush; the struggles of the two women to maintain their Cob House holding in the face of an onslaught of New Zealand elements; the even, tranquil tenor of life at the Orchards' ranch.

Eventually Harriet gets to fulfill her longing to go into the mountains, only to find them impassable. Joseph's failure to find gold inflames his self-absorption with hatred for the world, and young Edwin Orchard becomes afflicted with a strange, Maori-inspired illness. Harriet perseveres, obligated to meet up with Joseph one last time and the novel rises to new heights of cataclysm and a romantic obsession so intense it moves at times into the surreal.

With its majestic, forbidding landscapes, passionate characters and precise imagery, "The Colour" is a beautifully written novel and a riveting read. Though the setting couldn't be further from the ultra-civilized 17th century royal court of her last novel, "Music & Silence" (winner of the Whitbread Award), Tremain's deft depictions of self-defeating narcissism, and (on the other hand) the human longing for experience beyond the ordinary, remain elemental themes.

Not that the book is without flaws. The mystical connection between Edwin Orchard and his Maori nurse is more alienating and puzzling than intriguing and Joseph seems, at times, overwrought. Quibbles aside, this is a masterful novel with a story, setting and characters that will stick with you long after the last page is turned.

The Colour is a beautiful book. The characters inhabit a world that is vibrant, emotionally alive, daring with a host of smells and textures that pour from the page into your heart. It is an adventure story, a love story, a human story.

The setting is 1860's New Zealand, and the characters are trying to survive in a brash, untamed land. With an unfurling of lives that is natural and compelling, Rose Tremain transports the reader into a world that is so real that the cold of the mountain torrents, and the unbearably heavy lightness of the snow, and the strange wonder of the birds and air and clouds sink into your bones and deep into your mind.

Finishing this book was sweet sorrow. It all came full circle, but i didn't want to say goodbye. The world of The Colour, though, is as real as things seen only in the mind. Travel there yourself, and you won't soon forget the journey.

With remarkable skill Rose Tremain reconstructs New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century, where newlyweds John and Harriet Blackstone build their new, if temporary, home. Accompanied by John's widowed mother, Lillian, a saturnine woman who longs to return to her beloved England, the three live together, separated by flimsy walls of calico. Sturdy and resourceful, Harriet falls in love with this open land, her flourishing vegetable garden one small retreat from an ill-suited marriage to a man either unwilling or unable to be a good husband.

When John discovers a tiny amount of gold dust in their creek, he is infected with the fever for more, the same gold fever currently raging on the west coast of New Zealand. He hides this meager treasure from his wife, beginning a long process of denying the partnership with Harriet. His desire is single-minded and selfish, as dreams of wealth consume him. Disappointed with his negligible booty, John decides to board a ship and sail to the gold mines to seek his fortune and he intends to do so alone.

John becomes one of the miners, obsessed and driven, common sense a thing of the past. With observations unflinching as a camera, Tremain captures the force of this lust, wherein the quest becomes the goal. Here is this drive, this need in exquisite detail, the lives of the miners and the claims that patchwork the landscape exposed like helpless suitors in pursuit of an inconstant lover. Meanwhile, purveyors of goods collect handsome amounts of currency, providing necessities to the miners, a cottage industry springing up wherever Gold Fever strikes.

When Lillian dies and the newlywed's Cob House collapses from the onslaught of winter, Harriet goes after John to inform him of Lillian's death. Their first meeting is as awkward and formal as it was in the beginning of their relationship. Leaving John's camp, Harriet climbs higher, starting a claim near the produce garden of Chen Pao Yi, who sells his fresh vegetables to the miners.

Given time, the miners would scramble over the land and wantonly purge it, without a thought to the devastation left in their wake. But, like a sleeping giant, New Zealand has only to shift while dreaming and the men are scattered and destroyed, the continent returned to its former pristine beauty. With one brutal stroke, nature intervenes, changing all their lives. Separated, John and Harriet struggle to survive and it is clear that John is the glass half empty, while Harriet is certainly the glass half full. Harriet enters a period of awakening, cherishing each moment as it comes, while John is tormented by loss and self-pity. And the gardener, Pao Yi, is fortunate as well, for he is essentially the water, without need of a glass at all, inhabiting his world with quiet acquiescence.

Tremain is one of those accomplished writers who fleshes out her characters, all the trivial moments and secret longings that give them depth and believability, allowing the reader to understand these people in their flawed humanity. The colour, the gold, changes John, Harriet and Pao Yi intimately, each indelibly marked by this vast and awesome landscape. Luan Gaines/2003.

This is my 5th Rose Tremain novel. I've read 5 in a row: The Road Home, Restoration, The Colour, Music and Silence and Sacred Country. I am in the process of buying all of her works! If pressed, I couldn't tell you which I liked best. Each one wove its own intricate tapestry and connected with a part of my heart and mind. It would be like asking who your favorite child was... until I was a mother, I would say 'there HAS to be a favorite', but now that I have my own tykes, I understand. Each is special and lovely in individual ways.

The characters are complicated. You loathe one moment, but understanding prevails, and you can see the inner struggles and hurt, even as you steam. Though much less complicated than the others, in this story, my favorite character was/is Edwin. I wanted to snuggle him and protect him.

Tremain has a wonderful, exquisite gift for writing. I was telling my husband that reading her books is akin to eating... it just leaves you 'full'. Each sentence is meant to be savored and enjoyed. While reading in bed one night, my husband asked me to read a sentence as an example of what I was referring to (this whole eating analody didn't sink in with him)... I didn't even have to search; I simply read the next sentence.

Her books elicit in me such a profound sense of introspection and objectivity about others around me. For through the words of Rose Tremain, I am allowed to see into the hearts and lives of others, as if they actually were present and real. That I think of these characters even now, through many other novels, is deeply profound.

The only downside is that now, I crave her work. I am anxiously awaiting my next novel and plan to devour it with relish...

An historical novel set in New Zealand, there is much here that lays to rest the romance of the pioneer life. The famous beauty of New Zealand of today is intimidating and dangerous in Tremain's vivid descriptions. The people are largely tough, hardened types but are believable and they "grow" on you.

I consider this a very rewarding read and recommend the book.

The title of Rose Tremain's new novel refers to the glint of gold. Set during the 1860s gold rush in New Zealand, every character in the book is somehow touched by the crazed hunt for gold that eclipses all other possible occupations as the land is overrun by desperate miners and those who cater to them. It's a harsh world, driven by greed and deprivation, and utterly alien to the British newcomers, whose slender dreams are not strong enough to support their lack of knowledge and preparation.

Joseph Blackstone tries to outrun a horrible, tragic secret by marrying and moving his new wife, Harriet, and his mother, Lilian, to New Zealand and starting a farm. These three traveling companions are not particularly well-matched: Lilian finds the adjustment from refined Englishwoman to farm work in a foreign country to be very difficult; Harriet is forced to realize that she does not love her new husband enough to make a success of their hard new life; and Joseph just isn't resourceful enough to adapt to the strange demands of his new situation. Mining for gold and making a quick fortune seem like an easy solution to their insurmountable problems. Other settlers have done so, and facing up to failure in the midst of others' successes adds a particularly bitter tone to Joseph's experiences.

Joseph abandons his struggling farm and makes his way to the mining fields. This decision informs the fate of all three, and leads to surprising new developments. Joseph plummets to new levels of misery and disappointment in the mines, as success continues to elude him and his dark side reasserts itself. Harriet discovers unsuspected strengths; her bravery and compassion lead to bold choices and adventures. Lilian finds an unlikely, brief peace, but her death requires Harriet to search for Joseph in the mines, just in time for a catastrophic flood that annihilates the entire operation and changes the Blackstones' fortunes again.

The symbolism isn't difficult to understand. Gold represents success and the newcomers' ambition to improve their grim, practically hopeless lots. But ambition can be a complex compulsion and Rose Tremain deftly explores what makes these people happy, what they really want, and what they will do to fulfill their dreams. It's interesting that it's never the gold per se that fuels them, but what even a little money will allow them to do. Prosperity, security, a new start, or amends for an old crime --- these things are more precious and require sacrifices.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn

At the opening of "The Colour," John Blackstone, his mother Lilian and wife Harriet, are huddled in their mud house, shivering through a freezing New Zealand gale. The cob house is especially drafty and cold because John would not listen to anyone's advice and has placed the house in the most disadvantageous place possible. You know from the start that this trio is in for trouble.

After the death of his debt-ridden father, John sells everything remaining when the debt collectors are done with it and takes his mother and new bride to the opposite side of the world for a fresh start. It is the mid-19th century and New Zealand seems as good a place as any to start a farm. But John's decisions are weirdly off-kilter, making everything even harder than it need be. Lilian plots her escape, and Harriet wonders what happened to the fleeting bliss she and her new husband knew while preparing to emigrate. Something is wrong here, something that is exacerbated by the discovery of gold-"the colour" of the title.

This is a rich and mysterious novel, a place where grueling days of sodbusting meet the cloudy mountains of a dreamtime. Rose Tremain has the ability to imbue her story with the kind of deep emotion that cannot be described and do it in a most readable fashion. The setting and the characters of "The Colour " all ring true, including the mystical ties between an English child and a Maori woman. This is an worthy addition to Rose Tremain's earlier novels, which are worth checking out if you haven't done so already. Her books are notable for their strong historical detail and unusual emotional frisson. ---Reviewed by Candace Siegle

The Colour is set in 1860s New Zealand, a time of mad rush for gold as well as nation-building fueled by heavy immigration. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone arrive from England with Joseph's widowed mother Lillian in tow. Joseph acquires some land, builds a temporary house, and they begin the work of establishing a farm. But Joseph is distracted by gold fever after finding some of "the colour," and he is haunted by memories of the heinous act that led to his flight from England.

Meanwhile, Harriet comes to regret hastily marrying a man she barely knew. He was her ticket to something new and exciting, but she finds she cannot love or even like her parsimonious, affectionless husband. She is smarter and more resourceful than Joseph, and he resents her for it.

Eventually, the Gold Rush leads both Joseph and Harriet into experiences that test their mettle in ways they never could have guessed at when they dreamed of a new life in a new land. Joseph is found sorely lacking in character and fortitude, while Harriet discovers her hidden reserves of strength, determination, and self-sufficiency.

This is a rather meditative and often melancholic work. Rose Tremain gets deep inside the hearts and minds of the characters, sifting through their hopes and despairs and secret motivations. This is where her writing really shines.

I identified most strongly with Harriet. I could appreciate her growing desire for solitude, her love of animals and unbounded Nature, and her ability to go with the flow in a practical way. I was glad that her practical acceptance was eventually rewarded, and I can see her living out her future in a contentment very different from the one she'd envisioned.

As for Joseph Blackstone, I think he's a weak and pathetic excuse for a man. He doesn't recognize the treasure he has in Harriet and doesn't deserve her. He has a stinginess of spirit that pervades every relationship and endeavour of his life. He sees other people only as stepping stones or obstacles to his own selfish ends, and he's utterly lacking in self-knowledge.

The "supporting cast" of characters is also very memorable. There's Pao Yi, the gentle Chinese vegetable seller with his makeshift opium den. And the robust, enthusiastic, generous Toby and Dorothy Orchard on their very successful sheep run. And also Pare, the Maori woman caught alone between the two worlds, desperately wanting to do right by everyone, white or native.

I enjoyed moving through this story at a slower than usual pace, and I strongly recommend it for the character studies as well as a rich introduction to historical New Zealand.