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The Secret River (Paperback)

by Kate Grenville (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 19.95
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From Publishers Weekly

Grenville's Australian bestseller, which won the Orange Prize, is an eye-opening tale of the settlement of New South Wales by a population of exiled British criminals. Research into her own ancestry informs Grenville's work, the chronicle of fictional husband, father and petty thief William Thornhill and his path from poverty to prison, then freedom. Crime is a way of life for Thornhill growing up in the slums of London at the turn of the 19th century—until he's caught stealing lumber. Luckily for him, a life sentence in the penal colony of New South Wales saves him from the gallows. With his wife, Sal, and a growing flock of children, Thornhill journeys to the colony and a convict's life of servitude. Gradually working his way through the system, Thornhill becomes a free man with his own claim to the savage land. But as he transforms himself into a trader on the river, Thornhill realizes that the British are not the first to make New South Wales their home. A delicate coexistence with the native population dissolves into violence, and here Grenville earns her praise, presenting the settler–aboriginal conflict with equanimity and understanding. Grenville's story illuminates a lesser-known part of history—at least to American readers—with sharp prose and a vivid frontier family. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–William Thornhill, a boatman in pre-Victorian London, escapes the harsh circumstances of his lower-class, hard-scrabble life and ends up a prosperous, albeit somehow unsatisfied, settler in Australia. After being caught stealing, he is sentenced to death; the sentence is commuted to transportation to Australia with his pregnant wife. Readers are filled with a sense of foreboding that turns out to be well founded. Life is difficult, but through hard work and initiative the Thornhills slowly get ahead. During his sentence, William has made his living hauling goods on the Hawkesbury River and thirsting after a piece of virgin soil that he regularly passes. Once he gains his freedom, his family moves onto the land, raises another rude hut, and plants corn. The small band of Aborigines camping nearby seems mildly threatening: William cannot communicate with them; they lead leisurely hunter/gatherer lives that contrast with his farming labor; and they appear and disappear eerily. They are also masterful spearmen, and Thornhill cannot even shoot a gun accurately. Other settlers on the river want to eliminate the Aborigines. The culture clash becomes violent, with the protagonist unwillingly drawn in. The characters are sympathetically and colorfully depicted, and the experiencing of circumstances beyond any single person's control is beautifully shown.–Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

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4.8 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Historical Fiction at if's Finest, Feb 15 2006
By Teddy (Richmond, BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Secret River (Hardcover)
The Secret River by Kate Grenville is historical fiction at it's finest. It starts off as a quiet pondering story of the toils in poverty-stricken 19th century England where most must resort to stealing to survive. Here Grenville focused on her central character, William Thornhill who got caught thieving to feed his family. He was sentenced to death, however that was commuted to life in New South Wales.

The story then turns to the survival of the Thornhill family in a new world, with a harsh hot climate and struggles with it's original inhabitants, the aboriginals.

Grenville writes in a quite meditative style until the Thornhills encounter the aboriginals. Then she breaks out as she shows the brutal price that must be paid by both the new inhabitants and aboriginals of New South Wales. The Secret River is a very satisfying read that will make you hungry to read more by Kate Grenville!

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Opportunity and opportunism abound, Feb 28 2007
By J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Secret River (Hardcover)
This is a beautifully written novel about early white settlers in Australia and about the impact of such settlement on the indigenous inhabitants. It is also a novel about opportunities and opportunism.

In 1806, William Thornhill, convict, arrives in New South Wales transported for the term of his natural life.

In Kate Grenville's words: 'He had been condemned to death, and then to life.'

He is assigned as a convict labourer to his wife, Sal, and 8 years later is free to claim 100 acres along the Hawkesbury River.

William sees a future in New South Wales whereas Sal would like to return to London. This tension - between the known and the unknown - is one of the underlying themes of the novel. While personal to William and Sal, it also underwrites much of Australian colonial history.

When the Thornhills move to the Hawkesbury we see firsthand the impact of european settlement on the indigenous inhabitants. While the novel concentrates on the european perspective, it does not ignore the original inhabitants.

As The Secret River moves beyond the story of William Thornhill, convict, into the life of William Thornhill, emancipist, so New South Wales develops from a convict outpost to a european settlement in a foreign country.

This novel was inspired by Kate Grenville's research into her own family history.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A little point of land, Feb 1 2007
By Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Secret River (Hardcover)
Australian writers seem to have strong ties to the histories of their own forebears. Thomas Keneally, Richard Flanagan and Roger McDonald are but a few authors who have successfully re-painted history on a fictional canvas. Kate Grenville - who in "Joan Makes History" tried to encapsulate all of [European] Australia's history through one imaginary woman - has narrowed her focus with this book. This account of William Thornhill, transplanted Thames River waterman, depicts the kind of person capable of founding a nation. With excellent insight into a man's ambitions, feelings and needs, Grenville chains the reader's interest from the opening pages. Release comes only at the final page, and while satisfying, leaves one seriously disturbed by the cost of "nation building".

Grenville's story isn't new. Thousands of people were "transported" to Australia after 1788, some escaping the gallows, while the rest relieved the intense pressure of British gaols. Thornhill was lucky in his wife Sal's appeal to escort William being successfully considered. There were few women in Port Jackson, and a wife brought stability. Grenville offers a fine touch of irony in William's being "assigned" to Sal as a "working convict". Again, as he had in London, William becomes a waterman - helping a boat owner ferry cargo up and down the Hawkesbury River. While conveying along the river, Thornhill spots a point of land amenable to homesteading.

Thornhill and Sal begin scrabbling a home in the bush, but immediately confront a major obstacle. The key issue in "founding" the nation of Australia is that it was already occupied. Although the British Privy Council would declare an entire continent "terra nullus" - unoccupied land - , the Aborigines, who had lived there for thousands of years, knew otherwise. Grenville grants Thornhill more humanity than most of his neighbours. Some of that is due to Thornhill's wife, Sal, but the former Londoner isn't a fixed mentality. He's adaptable and enterprising without avarice. Grenville's description of Thornhill's initial and later dealings with the Aborigines, and the many confrontations that occurred as other settlers moved in, forms the centrepiece of her narrative. Europeans were astonished at how easily the Aborigines moved in the forest. Silent, evasive, intimately knowledgeable about the land, the Aborigines were vulnerable only to bullets - and something else the British had available.

While Thornhill wants peaceful coexistence, circumstances force other conditions. Others, of course, are less tolerating and the history of British settlers slaughtering those non-existent Aborigines might have started at Thornhill's Point. The British population, both free and under sentence, is growing. Farming and pasturage put pressures on land unable to support two vastly different lifestyles. The skirmishing diminishes Sal's relationship with her husband. Fearful for their children and herself, she threatens to take them to a settlement for safety. As pressures mount, the interaction of husband and wife grows quietly intense. Grenville portrays the conflicting loyalties - husband and wife, Thornhill and his land, the couple and their neighbours, humanity offsetting avarice - with clarity and feeling. You are kept spellbound as the story takes you to the resolution of this web of emotion.

NOTE: "The Secret River" is the fictional tale of Kate Grenville's own transported London ancestor. Those wishing to understand how history influences a writer's choices are directed to Grenville's "Searching for The Secret River for the effort that went in to making this novel. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "It seemed that he had become another person altogether..."
This review is dedicated to the late Stephen A. Haines, one of top reviewers on amazon, who kindled more interest in me for early Australian history than he ever knew. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Friederike Knabe

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a formidable historical fiction, beautifully imagined and executed
The Secret River is a novel about an emancipist settler in early colonial Australia and it is also a book about the early white encounter with the Aborigines. Read more
Published on Oct 25 2007 by LJM

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