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Title: The Secret River
Author: Kate Grenville
Narrator: Rupert Penry-Jones
Format: Abridged
Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-20-07
Publisher: Hachette Audio UK
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
The Thornhills arrive in a harsh and alien land that they do not understand and begin a life that feels like a death sentence. But among the convicts, there is a rumour that freedom can be bought - that "unclaimed" land up the Hawkesbury River offers an opportunity to start afresh. When William claims a hundred acres for himself, he is shocked to find Aboriginal people already living on the river - and that other recent arrivals are finding their own ways to respond to them. Soon William, a man neither better nor worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.
Critic Reviews:
"A very fine, albeit terrifying writer." (Irish Times)
"Kate Grenville is a writer of extraordinary talent." (The New York Times)
"Grenville writes exactingly and with passion about the Australian landscape...The Secret River is a sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss." (Observer)
Members Reviews:
Braving The New World Down Under
The Secret River is the best book Iâve read in quite a while.
Now that I have your attention, letâs talk about the book. Grenville, an Australian writer has hardly written anything that isnât praiseworthy, and this book, despite a minor wart or two, is one such. Uniquely, the book is a fictionalized version of the authorâs family history, although she doesnât 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 thereâs a complication: they have settled on land favored by the indigenous black people. Soon this leads to conflicts and outright war.
Grenvilleâs 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 twoâand here Iâm strugglingâshe could have done a little more in depicting Williamâs and Salâs 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
A powerful novel about Australia's history
Kate Grenvilleâs award winning book describes an English family transported to New South Wales (Sydney and its surrounding area) after William is convicted of theft and sentenced to death or indentured servitude in Australia.
Australia is a gorgeous country today and I can only imagine how rich and beautiful it must have been in the 1700âs. While it takes William and his wife some time to adjust to the dramatic change in climate and culture, in many ways the deportation is a gift rather than a sentence.
As William attempts to work his way out of servitude, he falls in love with a parcel of land thatâs in pretty unsettled territory.
