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The secret River

By Kate Grenville

(27)

| Hardcover | 9781920885755

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Critics

Bush ballad

The Secret River by Kate Grenville Canongate £12.99, pp352 Following The Idea of Perfection was always going to be a tough call. Five years on from her Orange Prize-winning bestseller about middle-aged love in the Outback, Kate Grenville has turned t ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

Guardian book club

We often talk as if "sympathy" were the sure symptom of a reader's satisfaction, the evidence of a character - usually the "hero" or "heroine" - brought successfully to life. Kate Grenville's The Secret River initially seems as if it were indeed keen ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

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6 Reviews

2 people find this helpful

I remember when I was a little kid, I asked why the Australians have such a funny accent, and my father told me that it was because their ancestors were British prisoners who were exiled to this remote colony 200 years ago. Since then, I have always been fascinated by how those people of the lowest ... (continue)

I remember when I was a little kid, I asked why the Australians have such a funny accent, and my father told me that it was because their ancestors were British prisoners who were exiled to this remote colony 200 years ago. Since then, I have always been fascinated by how those people of the lowest class in the British Empire could build such a great country that turns out to be Australia today.
Australian writer Kate Grenville's "The Secret River", one of the shortlisted books of the 2006 Man Booker Prize, provides the answer. It's a fictional account of William Thornhill, a lighterman (i.e. a person who transports goods on a boat) who was caught red-handed when committing a petty theft, and was exiled with his family in 1806 to Australia for life. In the colony, the Thornhills worked hard to build a life in the wilderness by taking a piece of land and planting crops. At the same time, they were living under the shadows of possible attacks from the "blacks", i.e. the aboriginals, who treated the colonists with hostility.
Tensions were always running high between the whites and the blacks, and Grenville did a good job to hook you to the destiny of the Thornhills as the story unfolds. Her description of the livelihood of the aboriginals and their tactics in dealing with the colonists is very detailed and well researched. It should not be far from the truth. Apart from giving you an enjoyable read, the novel is also thought-provoking as it makes readers pause and think about the true nature of colonialism. What we see today about Australia or another former colony may be prosperity and civilisation, but have we considered the interests of the aboriginals, the owners of the land who were there years before the colonists encroached upon their land? Many of their descendants have subsequently been assimilated into the colonists' society and culture, and technology and development may have brought them good. But is that what their forebearers desired and is it really in their best interest? I don't know.
Colonialism is always a difficult subject to write. It's not surprising that "The Secret River" did not win the Booker. I don't think the judges had an appetite for it.
A marvellous piece of work. The reason why I don't give it a 4-star rating is because of the prose. Grenville wrote it all in narrative without any dialogues (there are some banters between the characters but they are buried in the narrative and are worded in slangs and grammatically wrong language). Reading long descriptions without dialogues in a novel always drives me nuts...

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Tracy W said on Oct 29, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Drama with convicts and aboriginals. Honest and sincere, but lacking rythm.

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rayuela said on Nov 30, 2009 | Add your feedback

The most thing i liked about this book is the strength of the main character (Will Thornhill). I think that he was not a good or villain person but a combination of two.

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Hanan said on Nov 2, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

It is a very interesting story, I did not know anything about colonialism in Australia before reading this book and I found it fascinating.
I actually hated the main character, Thornill actually doesn't do anything to get the reader to love him. I still don't understand how Sal could love him ... (continue)

It is a very interesting story, I did not know anything about colonialism in Australia before reading this book and I found it fascinating.
I actually hated the main character, Thornill actually doesn't do anything to get the reader to love him. I still don't understand how Sal could love him after all.
The absence of dialogues and the slang made it very difficult for me to read, as a non-native speaker.

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Aoifestella said on Oct 19, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

The novel starts in the poor dirty streets of late 18th century London. Will, the protagonist is born into a poor family and through love is able to move up a rung to become an apprentice bargeman. Soon however things go wrong and he has to resort to stealing to support his wife & newly born child. ... (continue)

The novel starts in the poor dirty streets of late 18th century London. Will, the protagonist is born into a poor family and through love is able to move up a rung to become an apprentice bargeman. Soon however things go wrong and he has to resort to stealing to support his wife & newly born child. Of course he gets caught and finds himself transported to Australia.
Once in Australia the family is able to pick themselves up & eventually Will moves them to a spit of land that he feels is "His own. His own, by virtue of his foot standing on it". The only problem of course is that Aboriginals who had no concept of owning land, had been using it for generations. From here the novel really finds its own and follows Will through decisions that he can't always totally agree with, and yet lead to both a tragedy & him finally becoming a wealthy landowner.
Grenville does a great job describing the dirty cold streets of London as well as her native sunny warm Australia. She is able to turn what is in many ways a morality tale showing how man is fallible & can not always understand how his decisions will lead to consequences into a well rounded story.
The early descriptions of London are wonderful, as are some of the Australian scenes. The book is not a page turner, but is easy to read & has great language. It in fact won the 2008 Commonwealth Prize.

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Scott said on May 30, 2009 | Add your feedback

The story of an impoverished man who commits a crime and is deported with his family to the new colony of Sydney, Australia. Historically fascinating, full of hope and tragedy.

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Andy Neads said on Feb 1, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback