The Colour [Hardcover]

Rose Tremain has long been one of the most vigorous and imaginative of novelists; her sweeping narratives (set against the most vividly realised of canvases) have made her books as dramatic and assured as anything being written today. The Colour represents a further burnishing of her considerable talents; it is a powerful drama of greed and aspiration set in the New Zealand Gold Rush of the mid-19th Century.

Tremain's protagonists are Harriet and Joseph Baxter, who (along with Joseph's mother) leave England for the promise of the new world that New Zealand represents. Needless to say, their relocation comes with many attendant (and nigh-insoluble) problems. But their struggle against the land continues apace until Joseph discovers gold in a nearby creek and ill-advisedly conceals the find from his mother and his wife. Gold fever takes an all-consuming grip upon him, and he leaves the family-owned farm to traverse the gold fields of the Southern Alps. There he will find a strange fate: one that affects those he has left behind as well as him.

As a study of human nature in extremis, this could well be Tremain’s most impressive book. Lacking the elegant stylishness of Restoration, The Colour grants us a fastidiously rendered picture of life lived at the sharp edge. And while her characters are confronted with terrifying decisions that few of us are ever likely to encounter, Tremain’s narrative gifts make it easy to identify with the decisions (both wise and catastrophic) that her characters take. The sense of period is forcefully conveyed, and while this is not as ingratiating a read as such earlier Tremain books as The Swimming Pool Season, her new level of ambition makes it perhaps the author’s most important book yet. --Barry Forshaw

Readers familiar with British writer Tremain's magisterial historical novel, Restoration, or her psychologically acute study of madness, Music & Silence, will not be surprised at the accuracy of historical detail in this elegant and dramatic novel about the mid-19th-century gold rush in New Zealand or by her nuanced portrait of the disintegration of a marriage. Writing at the top of her form, she tells a complex story centering on two immigrants to New Zealand, whose recent marriage represents new hopes for both of them. Joseph Blackstone fled England to rid himself of memories of a shameful act; cold and secretive, he is emotionally constricted by guilt. Strong, spirited ex-governess Harriet Salt has narrowly avoided spinsterdom; to her, New Zealand represents the freedom to explore new horizons. Together with Joseph's mother, they attempt to build a farm on the flats outside of Christchurch, but when Joseph finds gold in the creek, he becomes obsessed by "the colour," as the fabulous metal is known. Abandoning both women, he travels by ship to the west coast, where he encounters hundreds of other desperate men and the clamorous, filthy, dehumanizing conditions in which they live. Later, when Harriet attempts to follow him by land, she cannot cross the gorge between the Southern Alps, justly called "the stairway from hell." By the time she does join him, each of them despises the other, yet the discovery of gold binds them in a new way. From this point on, the narrative, already full of subtleties and surprises, becomes riveting, as nature and human nature collide. There's a wonderful subplot about the mystical connection of a white boy and his Maori nurse, and an inspired depiction of a Chinese gardener who peddles his vegetables and becomes the instrument of Harriet's salvation. With its combination of vivid historical adventure and sensual, late-blooming romance, it's hard to see how this novel can miss winning a new audience for the immensely talented Tremain.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

*Starred Review* Most American readers are familiar with the California gold rush, for which both nonfiction and fictional treatments abound (for the latter, see Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune [1999] and Portrait in Sepia [2001]). But few will have even basic knowledge of the New Zealand gold rush of the same century. And while most appreciators of historical fiction will have previous reading experience with frontier novels, particularly those of the beloved Willa Cather, few will have encountered fictional depictions of immigrant life in the wilds of nineteenth-century New Zealand, where pioneers faced the same kind of excitement and tribulation--freedom with a price tag, in other words. Regardless, readers will be swept up here in the tale of a newly married couple, Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, who have left English shores to stake out a new life in the New Zealand wilderness. But gold--the "colour"--gets under Joseph's and Harriet's skin, and they are drawn to play out their destinies in light of how the discovery of gold releases them to their individual needs but separates them from their mutual ones. Astonishingly, Tremain lives up to the soaringly high standards set by The Restoration (1989), her splendid evocation of seventeenth-century England. Her new novel, like its well-received predecessor, is authentically detailed, compellingly plotted, and literarily accomplished. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

A sweeping saga of love and greed set during the mid-nineteenth century gold rush in New Zealand.

Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph’s mother Lilian, emigrate from England in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek, he guiltily hides the discovery from his wife and mother, and is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of the "colour", are violently rushing to their destinies. Harriet bravely decides to pursue her own journey towards an uncertain future. But nothing has prepared her for what happens when she too arrives at the gold diggings. Amid squalor and confusion, burning heat and icy flood, Harriet Blackstone comes face to face with the true cost of desire.

Hauntingly evocative, and by turns both moving and terrifying, The Colour is the story of a quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and in the process discover what it is that makes men and women happy.

Rose Tremain’s most recent novel, the bestselling Music and Silence, won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. Her work, including Restoration, Sacred Country and The Way I Found Her has been translated around the world.