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62 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, Brilliant and Sad much more..., March 23, 2006
Kate Grenville's "The Secret River" is not simply another story of adventure and the pioneering spirit of young Australia (a genre which I seem to never tire of). I picked this one up on my last trip to Oz when a kind bookshop lady insisted I buy it and now am so grateful to her. Grenville has written a brave book about, ultimately, choices to be made and their consequences.
Will Thornhill's life in late 1700's London is truly abysmal, although he eventually marries cheerful, clever, loving Sal. Grenville describes this period of London life very well (painfully so, but absolutely readably) and all that leads to Will being condemned to be hanged and then "pardoned" to life as a convict in Australia.
The hardships of pioneering in Australia, the hard work of those who want to get ahead, the in's and out's of how convicts could become emancipated, the drinking of those who are beyond help, the fear of the whites of the "blacks," the shock of the weather, climate, and so forth are all wonderfully written. Grenville is economical with her prose yet conveys so much. She manages to make us feel the harsh rains, the up's and down's of Will's and Sal's fortunes, all aspects of what needs to be conveyed, in other words, without going on and on. We never become bored, we never never feel anything is missing. I couldn't stop reading the book.
Furthermore, the marriage between Will and Sal was very well done. It could have been sappy in another writer's hands, but because Will and Sal had so much to overcome and because there was so much darkness in this novel, this strong marriage was needed as a technique, as well as being believeable and cheered by the reader. I loved Will and Sal together, and I loved Sal's courage and spunk.
It is, however, Grenville's courageous writing about not only the atrocities committed by the "blacks" (the term used in the novel) against the whites, but especially the whites against the blacks which haunts the reader... and for many reasons. I don't want to give away any endings but I think I can safely say that I kept wondering how much was artistic, how much was character/plot. How much is "white man's guilt" in what I saw (granted, as a first-generation American) was a bit too convenient, or glossed over, or weak or out of character or "let's get to the end"? (From what I understand, Grenville was researching her ancestry when she decided to start this book.)
I loved this novel though I truly was haunted by it, as the author probably intended. I can see why this book became a bestseller in Australia. In being such a courageous book with such a courageous look at the beginnings of this young country, it is also a provocative look at it's beginnings and issues which are, unfortunately, still ongoing, and as with all complex issues which have festered, have no easy answers.
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A surefire entry into the canon of Australian literature, May 6, 2007
Kate Grenville sure knows how to write. She is an amazingly polished and masterful contemporary fiction writer and her craft is never more evidently in display than in "The Secret River". The story of William Thornbill and his wife Sal's journey half way across the world from London to New South Wales, Australia and their seemingly endless struggle against the elements to keep body and soul together is the classic story of the early settler in the colonies. In her devastatingly torrid narrative, the Thornbills never give up - Sal in particular is a gem of a woman. She makes William's heart (and ours too) burst with pride when we see her digging deep within herself to find inner strength to support her husband's courage and ambition inspite of her own deep reservations. When the Thornbills' determination pays off and they become landowners in their own right, they start to flirt with a certain forgetfulness and go on to embellish their own history to gain social respectability. But we readily forgive them for they deserve much and their sin is only human.
Grenville's depiction of the Thornbills' unrelenting fight to the death against the creeping menace of the aborigines as they close in on their abode is never more vividly or effectively imagined. Even more illuminating is the observation that while the Thornbills and other settlers do battle with nature each step of the way for their place in the sun, the natives manage to dominate with their eery stillness. What are we to conclude from this ? That unlike the white man who is an intruder and a disrupter of nature's quiet equilibirum, the aborigine is a component of nature and an integral part of the overarching landscape ? It is to Grenville's supreme credit that she avoids politicizing the issue, leaving the reader to consider and draw his own conclusions.
If there's one modern title I predict would eventually be accepted into the canon of Australian literature, it would be "The Secret River". It really is that good.
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31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb book, June 22, 2006
One of the books I read during my recent holiday was Kate Grenville's brilliant The Secret River. But it was upsetting, too, which is why I've put off commenting. I've a penchant for colonial literature and this is an entry in that category for sure. Yet, what sets it apart from, say, Conrad and others, is its working-class tone.
And, it does make brutally clever sense. The British essentially used convicted felons and their families to settle Australia, or, at lest, its rim. It's shock troops weren't soldiers but the transported working class who quite likely were even more tenacious and driven. That's the story Grenville tells in this utterly affecting novel. It's the sort of book that gives the reader pause, makes the reader sit back a bit to question -- what is happening here? This is a revisionist sort of colonialism that sets a new context ... but doesn't change the outcome. But, then, nothing could.
Superb novel, excellent reading from stem to stern. The writing is particularly fine, herewith a few bits:
"She was inclined to take it personally about the trees, wondering aloud that they did not know enough to be green, the way a tree should be, but a washed-out silvery grey so they always looked half dead. Nor were they a proper shape, oak shape or elm shape, but were tortured formless things, holding out sprays of leaves on the ends of bare spindly branches that gave no more protection from the sun than shifting veils of shadow. Instead of dropping their leaves they cast off their bark so it dangled among the branches like dirty rags. In every direction that the eye travelled from the settlement all it could see were the immense bulges and distances of that grey-green forest. There was something about its tangle that seemed to make the eye blind, searching for pattern and finding none. It was exhausting to look at: different everywhere and yet everywhere the same."
...
"For himself he bought a pair of boots, the first he had ever owned. When he put them on he understood why gentry looked different. Partly it was having money in the bank, but it was also your boots telling you how to walk."
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