Ebook The Secret River Kate Grenville 9781841959146 Books

Product details Paperback 334 pages Publisher Canongate U.S.; Reprint edition (April 10, 2007) Language English ISBN-10 1841959146

The Secret River Kate Grenville 9781841959146 Books Reviews

• What a surprisingly beautiful masterpiece this book turned out to be for me! Such rich descriptions of landscapes and emotions fill its pages; nearly every sentence is crammed with accomplishment, so that I was continually surprised by the newness of an idea or phrase. I loved this book, which was made even more real by the fact that I live on an acreage on the Hawkesbury. Kate Grenville has captured its spirituality perfectly; how it gets into one's bones and ties one to it forever, despite isolation and some minor hardships (these days). Our piece of Oz was untouched by Europeans when we purchased it years ago, and like William Thornhill we (carefully) cleared a spot for our home. I must say that when my now grown children once ran barefoot and wild along its shores, pointing out Aboriginal middens almost washed away by rising tides, I felt a twinge of regret for the loss of what had been. If I could feel a twinge, separated by almost 200 years from the original landowners, then how much worse would it have been for Thornhill who lived uneasily in peace beside these people of the 'secret river' for a while? To me, Grenville describes with such authority and accuracy how Thornhill's gain would have also felt like a loss. Bravo to a great novelist.
• The Secret River is the best book I’ve read in quite a while.
  
  Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about the book. Grenville, an Australian writer has hardly written anything that isn’t praiseworthy, and this book, despite a minor wart or two, is one such. Uniquely, the book is a fictionalized version of the author’s family history, although she doesn’t make her family lineage clear.
  
  The novel is largely the story of William Thornhill, a bargeman on the River Thames in London. Like most men of that trade, the work is seasonal and physically demanding, and it pays so little that most bargemen steal from their customers to make ends meet. William does, and is sentenced to be hung. Instead, he, his wife Sal, and their child are exiled to the rustic environs of Australia. Sal continues to have children, and they begin to make a living in Sydney, but William yearns to own land, so he and the family sail up a nearby river and stake out a claim to a hundred acres, on which they grow corn.
  But there’s a complication they have settled on land favored by the indigenous black people. Soon this leads to conflicts and outright war.
  
  Grenville’s prose is persistently elegant here, and her interspersing of dialogue amid narrative depictions of the land and people of Australia is vivid and sensory. If I have a criticism or two—and here I’m struggling—she could have done a little more in depicting William’s and Sal’s interior life. Too, the denouement is a bit overdone and repetitive. But these are very minor quibbles in a finely wrought novel.
  
  My rating 18 of 20 stars
• This sounded like a book I would like about Australia and the original non native inhabitants sent from England as punishment for crimes both serious and petty. The main character in this book was caught stealing lumber as a perc of his job as a boat operator for hire. All the other boatmen skimmed some off the top, he just happened to get caught. After arriving in South Wales/New Zealand, he and his family set out to carve a home in the almost inhabitable wilderness. He struck a claim on 100 acres of land on the shore of the river and the rest of the book is about the fight with the natives who understandably feel the land is theirs to do with as they please. They strip the crops the settlers worked so hard on and they refuse to relocate to other parts of the island, squatting on the edge of the land with their families. I have to admit I skipped and scanned most of the last half of the book because it was more political than entertaining. I know the natives were not treated fairly, but that is not the story I wanted to hear. The settlers ultimately wipe out the natives in a bloody battle and the main character ends his life as a rich man and finds that the money he always wanted does not really make him happy. The bottom line for me was it was a boring book and I wish I had not wasted my time reading it, but that seems to happen a lot lately. Oh, for the excitement of finding a good book. I can only dream.