Customer Reviews

The Lieutenant

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

... to squeeze gently the fingers of another person." This is a long winded explanation for the word "kamara", the Cadigal expression for something like 'my friend'. The Cadigal are one of Australia's aboriginal 'tribes' who Daniel Rooke, astronomer by passion and soldier by necessity, encounters after landing in New South Wales with the First Fleet in 1788. Rooke, a loner since childhood, highly intelligent and curious about science, but awkward in his dealings with people, is an unlikely hero for an engaging gentle story of first intercultural encounters with aboriginals as the new British administration struggles to establish the first settlement in Sydney Cove. In her typical gentle and sensitive writing Kate Grenville has achieved something admirable and exciting with this novel: by recreating a fictionalized version of the actual events of the time, she has shown how human beings can succeed in interacting across any language and cultural divide and as a result can develop friendships that will change them fundamentally.

Daniel Rooke, similar to William Thornhill in The Secret River, her 2005 award winning novel, is loosely based on a real person: William Dawes, a little known soldier with an keen interest in the stars, the strange natural beauty of the local environment and, last but not least, a talent for languages. He inspired and informed Grenville's fictional treatment of a subject matter that has not lost its importance for Australians since. Beyond the specifics of historical events, Grenville has imagined a beautifully rendered intimate account of "first contact" between two very distinct cultures realized by two unusual individuals, Rooke and a young aboriginal girl, Tagaran. In fact, Grenville came across Dawes' notebooks by chance while researching her earlier book. Whereas in SECRET RIVER the aboriginals are, while strongly in evidence, without a direct voice (because she refused to invent one for them), here Grenville has Dawes notes that describe his growing friendship with a group of Cadigals, and in particular Patyegarang, the model for the fictional Tagaran, and their, often playful, attempts at learning each others language. The fictional story is created around the unique direct dialog and Dawes/Rooke's reflections on language and meaning, clearly set off in the text by italic print.

Grenville evokes the calm that comes over the isolated outpost that Rooke has created for himself - a different world that makes him - and the reader - forget the reality of the early encounters between military and locals and the precarious situation the settlement finds itself in. Upon arrival Rooke had established a very basic observatory on a promontory close to, yet separated from, the new settlement at Syndey Cove. He had grown increasingly fond of this, his private space, "[a] place so strange [it] took a layer of skin off a man and left him peeled... where the solitude without matched the solitude within." Yet, it is also the starting point for a journey of discovery of his other inner self that will bring him both deep happiness and an existential, and unavoidable, moral dilemma.

Grenville does not ignore the "other world" beyond Rooke's hut and space: the tentative efforts by the Governor to establish communication with the locals, the military operations against prisoners and aboriginals, etc. She develops believable characters around Rooke, in particular Captain Talbot Silk, a friend of Rooke's from an earlier navy expedition. Based on the historical Watkin Tench, he is quite the opposite in character to Rooke: smooth talking, jovial and with a contract for a book chronicling their early experiences in the settlement. Events are not going well and, in the end, like Dawes himself, Rooke is confronted with a moral choice and his decision will decide his life's path from then on.

For me Grenville's novel came dramatically alive in the encounters between Rooke and the aboriginal group. The importance of that section carries through to the end. Anybody who has ever been an outsider within a completely foreign culture will relate to the hero's experience: the first efforts at communication, the misunderstandings, the children's whispering and repeating of words and phrases, reflecting their complete lack of experience with a person not familiar with their language, their gestures and customs. Grenville captures this combination of awe and elation on both sides magnificently. [Friederike Knabe]

I had decided on three stars (three and a half, to be fair) for this book before I read the other reviews, and now that I have, I'm a bit perplexed as to why I'm so out of step with the apparent consensus of the other reviewers. Kate Grenville is clearly an accomplished writer, and the book's subject is intriguing, with great potential to develop into a powerful story. But The Lieutenant never really escapes the detachment of the title character, Daniel Rooke, who despite his appointment as a British officer, is a man of science more than war. Only fairly late in the narrative does he begin to wrestle with the fundamental issues of culture, conscience, identity and chauvinism that underpin the whole adventure and that could have made for an extraordinary read had they been developed more fully. As a consequence, it remains an arm's-length story and never packs the emotional wallop it could, or should, have.

Most of the story centers around Rooke's transplantation to New South Wales as part of Britain's grand plan to empty its overcrowded jails by dumping its convicts onto another continent (which, inconveniently, happens already to be inhabited). While he's excited about the exotic nature of his new surroundings, his main interest is in making a name for himself by mapping the heavens in the Southern Hemisphere. Instead, he finds himself befriending a handful of Aborigines and in particular, a young girl, who begins to teach him their language, which, being a scientist and linguist, he dutifully records.

Grenville does a fine job of describing Rooke's early life as a prodigy who never fits in with his peers, as well as the hardships everyone endures once they land in Sydney Harbor. There are hints of the culture clash to come, but but there's little sense of momentum building to the central tug of war Rooke must ultimately settle between his duty and his conscience. I kept feeling as if there was something missing--some depth, some insight, some drama. In its place was an episodic series of cross-cultural encounters, with mere glimmers of Rooke's emotional awakening. (In another era, he'd have probably been diagnosed with Asperger's.) Even when he comes to realize how much the girl means to him, the scene is anticlimactic. And the final part, essentially an epilogue, ends up raising as many questions as it answers. I almost found myself wishing Grenville had extended the story to cover the intervening years in the detail, except by then I was mostly glad to be finishing the book so I could move on to something more compelling.

Ordinarily, I have no problem with "small" stories--in fact, really enjoy them. But this was a small story that was screaming to be a big one, and I was, frankly, disappointed. For a more gripping story with similar themes, I highly recommend Andrea Barrett's superb Voyage of the Narwhal.

For many American readers, the most pleasurable part of reading The Lieutenant will be exposure to Australian author Kate Grenville, rather than the unfolding of the plot. Very popular (beloved is not too far a stretch) in Australia, the quality of Grenville's work, including her previous novel Secret River, is easily high enough to make the trans-Pacific journey to American shores.

Grenville's considerable skill as a writer, and her uncommon ability to achieve cross-cultural perspective, is no accident: she teaches creative writing, and she has lived in Europe, the United States, and Australia.

The Lieutenant is fiction, but based on the life of William Dawes, a lieutenant in the First Fleet that brought convicts to Australian shores in 1788. The main character, Daniel Rooke, is a bit odd, scientifically and mathematically gifted, with extraordinary linguistic talent. This constellation of characteristics, when encountered today, is often categorized as in the higher functioning autistic spectrum. Rooke, often painfully aware of his own limitations, works hard to establish a relationship with, and learn the language of, the Cadigal, natives that inhabit New South Wales. His growing respect for, and love of, the natives is transformative for Rooke. The conflict between the values that Rooke brings to Australia, and his deep attraction to the Cadigal, brings the story to a climax in which he has to choose between loyalty to his nation and allegiance to his own moral principles.

Kate Grenville's strength is in the details, and in her refusal to descend into literary soap opera. Reportedly, Grenville researches a book for at least a year before she pens it, and the result is highly pleasurable to any reader with a hunger for knowledge about other cultures, as well as those that take pleasure in accurate history coming to life. Grenville draws natural scenery with a sure and creative hand; some of her scenes depicting the Australian coast and sky at night make the novel worth reading even if she included nothing else. Grenville does include much else, though, and her posing of the moral dilemmas facing those first white settlers of Australia is deeply thought-provoking.

Grenville has a talent for describing the human body, and the nakedness of the natives gives her ample opportunity for doing so. Portraying the human form without salaciousness, and describing physical intimacy without resultant sexuality, Grenville makes a gift to the reader of an almost Eden like innocence and purity.

What you won't find in this book is pitched action and unrestrained physical passion. The pace of the book is almost meditative, dream-like, more geared to the exhaled cleansing breath than the thumping heart or the gasp of surprise. Distinctly foreign, but readily readable, The Lieutenant will be a pleasure to those that like to take literary trips to times long gone and places far away.

I was interested in this book from the description, but I expected the writing to be arty and heavy going, so I didn't start reading it right away. I was pleasantly surprised to find a sophisticated yet incredibly readable historical novel that gave me a compelling sense of its time and place.

In this fictionalized account lightly paralleling real events, Daniel Rooke is introduced to us as a curious boy in England, the son of a clerk. He has trouble making eye contact or understanding what people expect him to say or do, and instead buries himself in interesting mathematical puzzles. At seven, he writes the first hundred primes - which cover all the paper he has. He discovers a love for astronomy, and is sponsored by the Astronomer Royal, but when it comes time to seek a job, Dr. Vickery sadly advises Rooke that there are not many paying positions for astronomers. Even a prodigy will have to wait for an opening - a retirement or death.

So Rooke joins the Marines, where he discovers to his pleasure that every sailing ship is in effect its own observatory; Rooke becomes a first-rate navigator. Eventually, he finds himself on his way to New South Wales, Australia, where he will help establish a settlement for prisoners, and attempt to observe a predicted comet that will be visible only in the southern hemisphere.

Rooke is drawn as someone on the Asperger's spectrum, someone who is adept with mathematics and patterns and rules but who has some trouble working out appropriate human interaction. His character is complex, and most especially as he learns and grows. As a group of natives befriend him at his remote observatory outpost, Rooke does his best to learn their language, documenting the sounds and guessing the meanings in a pair of slim notebooks. I thought it was surprising how confidently he wrote down meanings, and then was rewarded when he came back to his notebooks and realized how arrogant he had been to think learning a few nouns would be enough, or that he could learn a language from scratch in this way without also developing a deep relationship with the people he was speaking with. The more he learns, the more he realizes how little he knows, not just of the language, but everything. As time goes on, the conflict he feels between his duties as a soldier and his duties as a friend and fellow human becomes more and more tense.

I loved this novel, which I finally read in 3 sittings, for its window into linguistics, its joy of astronomy, and its exploration of the human conflicts in a soldier ordered to treat others (both prisoners and natives) as less than human. It's beautifully written, and is appropriate for teenagers as well as adults.

The notebooks that William Dawes (Rooke's real-life inspiration) kept while at his observatory in Sydney Harbor have been scanned and are available online at [...]. I already found them beautiful from Kate Grenville's description of their contents, but to see the words he wrote in the original script is deeply moving.

This is a novel of character, of first contact, of conflict between duty and a sense of humanity. It's based on the real life of William Dawes, a relatively unknown soldier who was part of the first colonizing expedition to the Sydney Cove area in 1788.

Grenville's fictional Lieutenant Daniel Rooke is very much a loner and outsider, something of a mathematical prodigy with a strong interest in astronomy and with a talent for languages. He joins the British marines as an available career path that will allow him to indulge in his interests, but his first experience with real battle begins his exploration of just where duty to country and the promise of his oath of fealty should end and higher moral principles should control. All this is very well delineated in the early portion of the book, which nicely sets up the main portion of the events surrounding the first colony establishment in Australia.

It is with Rooke's patient, sometimes fumbling, sometimes arrogant, sometimes heartfelt attempts at establishing contact with the aborigines and learning their language that this book really shines. Rooke's relationship with the girl Tagaran, who in many ways seems to share Rooke's fascination with language and has quite a sense of playfulness, develops slowly and realistically. But as this relationship develops, it also forces Rooke to see this alien culture as just as viable and worthy as the British one, not 'savages', and leads to real conflict between orders of his superior officers and his sense of humanity, fair play, and justice. How he resolves this conflict forms the fitting conclusion of the book.

While this characterization is excellent, and the thematic point is well handled, I found the descriptions of the area and some of the details of various events a little bit sparse, which made it a little difficult for me to really 'see' the scene and put a certain distance between myself and Rooke. I don't usually think a book would be improved by more description, but here I think this exotic locale and the events of that time really deserved a greater exposition. As (a very long time ago) I used to live about 15 miles from where the events of this book took place, this was an area of great interest to me, to be able to compare what this place is like today with what it was then, just how today's world was influenced by those long ago events, and I was somewhat disappointed in this area.

Still, a fine novel of character, nicely nuanced, and which will expand your knowledge of humanity and the different cultures humans construct.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Every now and then a book comes along that makes you want to tug on the next person you see and say, "You MUST read this!" The Lieutenant is that kind of book. It enraptured me and held me tightly in its grip so that by the end, its poignancy lingered...and I suspect will keep on doing so for quite some time.

The book focuses on the character of Daniel Rooke, a loner and an outsider, a man who cannot seem to find his rightful place in life. He has a natural affinity with astronomy and the stars; his gift lies in measuring, calculating, and deducing. Eventually, he finds his way to the marines and journeys with them to New South Wales as a lieutenant. Even there, he stays distant from his fellow countrymen, preferring to live alone in his own observatory.

Gradually, Rooke becomes fascinated with the natives and they, in turn, with him. For the first time of his life, he makes a real connection...with the eldest of the native children -- a girl named Tagaran, whose intelligence and understanding is like quicksilver. With Tagaran as a conduit, he begins to decipher and learn the language. He discovers "you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you.Learning a language was not a matter of joining any two points with a line. It was a leap into the other."

As Rooke learns the language of connection, he also learns the language of doubt. He finds that his countrymen aren't noble or good or righteous. When he is asked to join in on a heinous act, he reflects: "It is the simplest thing in the world. If an action was wrong, it does not matter whether it succeeded or not, or how many clever steps you took to make sure it failed. If you were part of such an act, you were part of its wrong."

The Lieutenant is nothing less than a roadmap on what it means to be human. It is about how everything finds its place with everything else. And, in our era of shifting ethics and morality, it is a searingly powerful lesson on how to stand up for what we know is true and right. The book is based on the story of a real life young lieutenant, William Dawes, and Ms. Grenville has made extensive use of Dawes' language notebooks. Read this book now and be richer for it!

"The Lieutenant" is based on the real-life William Dawes, a British soldier-scholar who was aboard the First Fleet that brought convicts to Australia in 1788. Interested in linguistics, he compiled the first guide to the language of the indigenous tribe he encountered, as well as a record of his interactions with several native people, including a young girl. As Kate Grenville comments in an afterword to the novel, "between the lines of these exchanges is what seems to be a relationship of mutual respect and affection." Into this "seems to be" steps the novelist. Unfortunately, this promising story is nearly flattened by the weight of its theme, which is relentlessly evoked on nearly every page. There is no subtlety in "The Lieutenant" and little moral complexity except for Daniel Rooke, the protagonist, and a friend, Lieutenant Gardiner (who is merely sketched). All of the other whites are stupid, opportunistic, brutal, sadistic, lecherous, and so on. And the native people are the opposite. The manner in which this novel is realized seems more suitable for a young adult novel.

Grenville's Daniel Rooke is an appealing figure at first, particularly as a brilliant, lonely, and poor young man in 18th century England. Grenville also gets right the passion for astronomy in this period, although the isolated aerie of an observatory Rooke later creates in Australia seems unlikely, given the need for labor by one and all in the early days of colonization. It sets up the plot, however, since this removed spot allows Rooke his encounters with the native people. From this point on, the novel centers on the relationship between Rooke and the native girl, Tagaran, and the word that links them, "kamara" (friend), a hybrid word meant to suggest the blending of the two cultures. Rooke undergoes an epiphany; he discovers "truths, powerful in spite of having no names, about two people and what they might share." Does Grenville mean to suggest that if everyone on board the First Fleet had been as sensitive to native culture as Rooke, then the colonization of Australia, with its decimation of the native peoples, might have been a happy affair? Like the story of Pochahontas and Captain John Smith, this seems a simplistic lens for a very complex set of events.

In the final chapters, Rooke's difficult moral decision (which includes a solitary plunge, naked, into the sea--is the novel heading for a screenplay?) is the ending you know is coming. In the last scene in the novel, Tagaran waves to Rooke as his ship departs for England. No one is waving a century later when Marlow steams up the Congo toward the Inner Station in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." This novel (also based on a real experience--Conrad's own) has a protagonist who is nearly undone by the complexity of his moral encounters with the depredations of empire. "Heart of Darkness" is arguably a more grownup book than "The Lieutenant," which romanticizes a relationship that must have been far more complicated.

This novel, set in the late 18th century, uses the life of Lieutenant Daniel Rooke as a way of observing many of the issues associated with the arrival of the British First Fleet in New South Wales in 1788. Lietenant Rooke is a loner. He is also highly gifted in the mathematical mysteries of astronomy and navigation.

The majority of this novel is set in the fledgling settlement of New South Wales, and describes the struggles of the first fleet settlement in what must have seemed an alien land. Daniel Rooke is allowed to establish a camp at some distance from the main settlement. Here, on a promontory overlooking the harbour he undertakes his observations of the skies. It is here also that he makes contact with some of the local inhabitants. Daniel Rooke tries, through documenting the language spoken, to understand the people that most of his colleagues dismiss as savages.

This novel is based on the life of Lieutenant William Dawes. I think that is both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that there is a strong historical basis for the story, and it touches on aspects of Australian history which continue to shape our nation. The weakness is that the characters, including Daniel Rooke, do not really become alive. To borrow a quote from the novel: `Like a stuffed parrot they would be real, but not true.' I wondered whether this was a constraint of history: that sometimes a story is confined and cannot develop freely.

I enjoyed this novel, and I am still thinking about it. I always find Kate Grenville's writing a joy to read, even when the contents are not comfortable. In this novel, as in `Secret River', she touches on aspects of the European settlement of Australia which many Australians find uncomfortable.

Perhaps, in this case, the novel is aimed to inform than to entertain.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

In Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant, there is a certain charm and spirit that you might not find in many contemporary works. Grenville has a great command with prose, and the novel proceeds at a nice easy pace taking you through the experiences of an unlikely hero, Daniel Rooke. Not only does the book have heart, but there is also a depth and authenticity to her story. Rooke's character is based loosely on William Dawes, a solider who also had a knack for astronomy, mathematics and language, and had worked with the indigenous people in Australia. Similar to Rooke, Dawes was faced with an inner conflict of having to either perform duty and go against his better judgment, or face the consequences of refusing his superior. This is the basis for the journey that Rooke goes through, and it leads up to his moment of choice.

There are several stages of the novel where we learn about our protagonist, Rooke. In the opening part, we begin understanding who the young Rooke is as his is a wiz in numbers yet sort of an outcast in school. As the story unfolds, he decides to enlist in the military and experiences war first hand. There is one particular scene where he witnesses the hanging of a fellow soldier; the hanging's brutality leaves an irreversible scar on his perception of war. Later in the book he continues to be a military man, but there is a distance and invisible line he draws between his love for the astrological world and nature, and his duty as a lieutenant. His fellow comrade Silk attempts to chronicle their experiences at Sydney Cove, and often turns to Rooke for advice. While stationed here, the group meets and attempts to work with the Aboriginal people, but ultimate conflict is inevitable. Rooke is stationed as an astrologer who is charting the appearance of Halley's comet, but, as he does this, he also takes an interest in the new found culture and language of the Aborigines.

This was a highly enjoyable book, especially the latter part where Rooke is interacting with the natives and learning a new language. He bonds with a few of the group, namely one child, Tagaran, who teaches him through not only words but actions. Rooke records the language in a journal, and he forms a higher appreciation for this momentous discovery. Rooke is a character who constantly analyzes two worlds, the outside world of performing his work as a lieutenant, and the inner world of discovering who he is, and what his calling is in life.

Highly recommended!

This is a sweet, readable, short book about first contacts in New South Wales, and a man who "grew a soul" through a relationship with a precocious native child. It is based on abolitionist William Dawes memoirs and life, though presented as a complete fiction. It touches on the evils of imperialism and slavery as well as the history of colonization of Australia.
It would be a very good book for older children except for one thing. There are several references to visits to prostitutes which just don't seem to belong - not to the man's story or the book. They are used in the plot to contrast with the purity of the Lieutenant's relationship to the girl, but I think it would take little imagination to manage without. I haven't read extensively about the man the story was based on but as far as I know this isn't a feature of his real life, and so I consider the device kind of lazy.
That said I will let my children read it and discuss it with them.
Other than that it seems to be more suited for younger readers than for adults.