The Secret River

By -
The Secret River, by Kate Grenville

I scootched in just before the deadline!  I wanted to participate in Brona's AusReading Month, so I picked out a book that's been on my mental (not literal) TBR pile for a few years--Kate Grenville's The Secret River, which (in case you care) won the Commonwealth Prize and was in the finals for the Man Booker Prize.  I got kind of bogged down when it became obvious that really unhappy things were going to take place, but then I gathered up my courage and read the second half in a day.

William Thornhill is a London waterman who--like most laborers--steals here and there to get by.  When he's caught, he's sentenced to death, but gains a merciful sentence of transportation, together with his beloved wife Sal and their baby.  He lands in Sydney in 1806, and after years of labor, gains his own ship and a route carrying goods between tiny farms and the town.  Will's dream is to own some land himself, but eventually he has to deal with the people who already live there.

Grenville's writing is lovely, and it's easy to be drawn into Will and Sal's lives.  We actually get Will's entire life story, and honestly I enjoyed that part most.  None of Will's life is fun or anything, but the London part is easier to read.   But, while I liked Sal a lot, I do not love Will.  He seems...wishy-washy to me; he often doesn't so much make decisions as just float along, even when he knows he's following men who aren't worth a thing.  Although Will is the one whose head we live in, I understand Sal a lot better.

A very good novel, but no light or enjoyable read, or one that I will return to with fond memories.  Hard stuff.

Comments

  1. KailanaNovember 29, 2016 at 3:21 AM

    I have had this on my radar forever, but haven't read it. One day it will happen!

    ReplyDelete
  2. BronaNovember 29, 2016 at 3:41 PM

    This was a tough read and sections of this book have been much debated in Australia (for one such commentary I recommend this article)

    The Thornhill character was actually loosely based on one of Grenville's ancestors, Solomon Wiseman (I'd love to read a proper biography of this ancestor).
    If you'd like to read a thoughtful non-fiction book about early relations between the early white settlers and the Aborigines, I highly recommend Inga Clendinnen's book, Dancing with Strangers.

    Thank you for joining in AusReadingMonth again :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more