Kate Grenville Books

This novel is one of the most emotive I have read. It tells the story of a girl and her struggles to conform to the norms of her dysfunctional family and abusive father. She is an outcast not only within her own family but within the colonial, patriarchal society she lives in. Eventually, she rejects the conformism of her upper-class upbringing and becomes an outspoken street person A fictionalised account of the life and times of the late Bea Miles, well known Sydney eccentric

Lilian's Story is a book I have had to read for my university english course, and it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. Lilian is a true survivor when all the odds are against her. I would recommend this to anyone.

Shows the fascinating process ten Australian novelists went through with their manuscripts. If you like visuals, you'll love this book. From the more traditional style of rewrite (crossings-outs in a typed draft) all the way to the exotic--such as the drawings of spider webs, naked ladies, and dress patterns used by author Finola Moorhead for REMEMBER THE TARANTELLA.

The co-authors (Sue Woolfe is the other author, albeit not listed here by Amazon) also bare their souls with samples from their own manuscripts. The visuals are enriched by wonderful interviews plus tidbits such as character sketches rendered by the ten featured authors. This book will remind you once again that there's no "right" way to write--except your own way.

This is a splendid book and the audio CD version has an award-winning male narrator.
I highly recommend it.

Each time I opened Ms. Grenville's novel, I stepped backward in time. Her attention to detail saturated each page without leaving the reader suffocated. I shivered in London's biting cold and then melted under Australia's harsh sunlight. Her protagonist was all too human while all of her characters had mindsets appropriate to the period -- not marred by hindsight. I would, will and have recommended this book to everyone and anyone. Fabulously done!

This is a book and review that I am quite ambivalent about. I had a rather strange response to this book which won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize. The subject, the convicts who settled Australia has always been of interest to me and yet I found the book less than compelling. Its separate parts all seemed so predictable and unexciting; the characters appeared to be more props to serve as metaphors for the overall telling of the historical experience. It has a structure that turns to a monotony of this happen to Thornhill, and then this happens next with some overly "flowery" language thrown in. You know just where the plot is going and nothing surprises you. Yet, overall, I must admit the book did provided and interesting overall experience upon reflection. One of my big issues with the story is that it is so epic in nature as it is really a complete fictional biography of its major character William Thornhill. Thornhill is born poor in London, meets girl (a rather too perfect girl too), marries, gets an opportunity to succeed but is put down by the class system, is caught stealing, convicted, sent to Australia where he and family begin a new life. He then develops a lust for land, and finds the "blacks" stand in his way. The books third person narrator attempts to explain and justify Thornhill's decisions and motivations. But these came to me as a bit cliché.... Bottom line, A lust for land over all else. Each part of the book is increasingly better than the prior parts with the last two parts the most satisfying. I kind of liked the epilogue style ending. It is interesting to note that so many Amazon reviews gave this book 5 stars which it makes me wonder what other Novels they are comparing it too. It would be my recommendation to pick this up if your interested in a Howard Fast immigrant tail, but you would be better served by reading Robert Hughes's, THE FATAL SHORE.

Great book. A sound historical baseline brings the reader from the Thames to the land down under through the eyes of a boatsman who does what he has to do to survive and care for his family. In the process, he gets sentenced to death, commuted to a Sydney Penal colony in his wife's custody, endures social injustice as a felon, eeks out something resembling freedom only to pervey social injustice against the aborigines of the Autralian back country.

Poetically penned in a font easy on 50 year old eyes. I have gifted this book to several good friends and they have enjoyed it immensely.

I loved this book. I read it very quickly because it was so hard to put down. Kate Grenville writes beautifully and captures the magic of the Australian landscape.

The story is about William Thornhill who is sentenced to life as a convict in Australia in the early 19th century. The first part of the book concerns his life in Georgian England. He is born into abject poverty and although he tries to make an honest go of it, circumstances lead him into crime. He is convicted of theft and his sentence is to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. His wife and child accompany him. This part of the book is a little slow, but the momentum picks up once they get to Australia, about 75 pages in.

In Australia, Thornhill discovers that the new country represents a blank slate where he can re-invent himself and break out of the cycle of poverty and crime that he has come from. He quickly wins his freedom and seizes the opportunity to get his own land and create his own farm, staking a claim to 100 seemingly vacant acres of land. However this brings him directly into contact (and potentially into conflict) with the native Aboriginal people.

The book is beautifully written. It really takes you into the world of early colonial Australia and gives you a sense of how difficult a life the early settlers had. The tension builds and builds as it become obvious that some kind of conflict between Thornhill's family and the Aborigines is inevitable. It made me understand the way that good people can be conflicted about what the right thing to do is. Different settlers in the area make different decisions and as you read the book, it you wonder how you would have acted in the same circumstances. But aside from the moral dilemmas, it's just a good story: a man trying to create a new and better life for himself and his family, overcoming many hurdles and setbacks, and gradually realising that the biggest threat of all is right in front of him.

The narration/ point of view in this novel is really exceptional as it all takes place in the mind of a supposedly upstanding Aussie citizen, owner of a family stationary business, men's clubbite, and ravenous consumer of all and any facts, especially odd reproductive habits of plants and animals, not exempting the human species. There is so much dark and wry humor in this 1st person narrative that I was laughing almost against my better instincts thruout. Every scene is near perfect from the awkward courtship ceremonies of our slowing maddening hero, through the visits to brothels, business practices, and family life/marriage through to the bitter end.For a truly unique perspective into the mind of a very depraved man, this one is hard to beat. And to think it was written by a woman! Amazing!

This is a novel of outstanding quality in every respect. Grenville knows how to write right across the gender barrier. If one were to remove all details of authorship from the cover of Dark Places, I very much doubt that even the best critic would detect that the author was female. She does a spectactular job of writing from a male perspective. Her main character Albion Gidley Singer, is to all intents and purposes an upstanding male citizen who comes complete with all the accolades of success, but who has a very dark side. He has "... a fear and loathing of the flesh of females." Worse still, he despises himself. What's interesting about Grenville's approach to this character is that the reader somehow becomes Albion; that he/she is transformed into the monster that he is. Ironically, there's no way that Grenville is being anti-male here. In fact, she shows the reader that Albion is a victim of his mother as much as he is a victim of a patriarchal society and ultimately, himself. A fascinating novel that takes the reader white water rafting into the darker realms of their consciousness.

Kate Grenville is a terrific writer. Her prose is clear, concise and flowing, yet never dry or prosaic. Albion Gidley Singer, the subject of "Dark Places", could very easily have become a caricature, but in Grenville's expert hands, he is at once a monster for the evil he perpetrates but also a victim of his parent's grotesque upbringing methods. Brought up to despise the female species - in his eyes, soft, weak, mindless, lacking in intellect and above all, trivial - the cruelty he shows to his society wife Nora and his fat but intelligent daughter Lilian, is a front and a cover up for his own pitifully underdeveloped inner self. He surrounds himself and obsesses with facts simply because he hasn't the ability to offer an opinion or make a common human judgement on anything. Lacking a sense of humour, he is socially inept but retreats behind a picture perfect persona manufactured to fool the world. His unspeakable cruelty and crime against the rebellious Lilian marks the start of his own unrevelling. Even poor weak John finds his vocation and loosens himself from Albion's clutches. "Dark Places" is a fascinating study of dysfunctionality, yet there are times you feel your interest dulled by the sheer deadweight of its predictability in characterisation and its unremitting sense of doom. If not for Grenville's remarkable skills as a writer, some may even find it one dimensional and tiresome in parts. I myself enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it as a text to be studied and discussed.

I bought this book by chance (nice cover).
It is a good story and reads easily. The woman shines through beautifully and the husband plays his part well - a weak and slow witted person and yet a good husband and father. One son has the courage to rebel and shows the beauty of what man is capable.
And isn't it a cooincidence that Australia just apologized to the autochtones for all of their inhumane treatment.
The paralell between the European devastaton of the Americas and Australia is quite normal given the arrogance of the Occidental Civilization.

Although I began Secret River buoyed by other reviews, it soon became apparent to me that my view would be very different. Upon concluding the book, I have these observations.

A novel should have, in my view, some sort of coherent plan. In my own mind, I liken this to the form of a symphony where there is a discernible continuity above and beyond the details of the momentary presentation. This book, comprised as it is of a series of overly long vignettes, has no particular plan that I could discern. Even considered in the light of the perfectly serviceable device of narrative-via-vignette, there seems to be a lopsided and pointless dwelling on the harsh exigencies of life in 18th-century London and early colonial Australia. Instead of continuing some sort of story, 90% of the writing seems simply pointless verbiage about unfortunate people contending with a grueling life. Even so, the apotheosis of the novel, the massacre of the aborigines, is written in such a way that the horrors of the moment are glossed and prettified, and though the author has never spared us the ugliness of the daily lives of the protagonists in the first part of the book, this particular moment is something from which she recoiled, and so we are left with an anemic description that does not leave us full of outrage. We are left, instead, with a bemused sense of puzzlement: did we, in fact, just witness a carnage?

Then follows one of those to-make-a-long-story-short moments after which we are given a glimpse of the characters whiling away their declining years in comfort and physical stolidity. Give me a break! This is how it ends? This is the great literature others have extolled? I don't think so. This is the gutless performance of a person who has proved she can spell all the icky words but cannot, when it is neccessary, summon the courage to actually write them.

I would rate this book as worthy of less than one star if that were possible. To those considering this book, I advise that you save your money.

I never knew much about the early history of Australia, so this fictional account of early settlement near Sydney was really interesting to me. The story line is based on the life and marriage of a transported convict, with an equally compelling account of the conflicts between the white settlers and the native people living in the same area. I enjoyed it as an entire work, yet the storyteller generally opted for the unsurprising turn of events, and I also could not help feeling that this was a "woman's novel".

I loved this book. Just the act of reading this book itself gave me so much pleasure- I would sometimes just go back over the same words and marvel at how well they fit together, how genius Grenville must be to write descriptive passages just so, in a way that created such vivid images.

The Secret River is above all about the ache, the passion, people feel for a place they call home. The desire a man feels to make something of himself, become bigger than he is, to make his mark on the world. And the inevitable conflict that comes with the culture clash.

It's hard, when approaching a book about historical racial conflict, to hit the right tone. Sometimes, the "historically accurate" tone of racism is so blatant and painful that it physically makes me ill. Sometimes, authors tiptoe around the issue so much that there isn't much impact made.

I think that Grenville hits the tone perfectly. Sometimes, just sometimes, even racist people feel guilty about their acts of violence and hate.

William Thornhill is one of those people- who turns, slowly but steadily, from one person into another, and doesn't realize it until it's too late and the damage is done. Kate Grenville presents him in an imperfect light, but a sympathetic one. He is a complex and fascinating character, and while there were many times in the book that I did not like him, I could not help but respect his tenacity, and I always, always looked for a reason to cheer for him.

This book is beautifully written, tackles a huge subject with an artist's touch, and leaves its mark. Highly, highly recommended.

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

An unsparing, fascinating portrait of a hollow man who belittles and rapes the women in his life, sneers at those men who have the very thing he most desires and fears: true intimacy--both with the women in their lives and with their fellow human beings; and who must fill himself up with facts in a vain attempt to validate his existence and worth. Instead of a hidden, aging portrait in an attic which allows the main character to remain in a state of youth, Grenville gives us a library which allows the main character to assemble an identity of sorts from all the books he reads. As long as he keeps reading and digesting information, Albion Singer will exist. Uncomfortable in his own skin, he attempts to mold himself into the ideal man through his constant seach for facts. Albion's life is a constant state of orgasmal frenzy, if you will, in his never-ending quest for facts to satisfy his empty nature. But, ironically, he is almost undone when Nora, his long-suffering wife, reveals, she too, is engaged in fact-finding research. "It crossed my mind that this assembling of facts was a kind of parody of my own beautiful catalogued battery of information...." Albion always presumed that he "any day now--would sit down and assemble all his researches into something definitive" as if this would finally validate him in life and make him whole. Albion's Story might be Grenville's Portrait of Dorian Grey, but this portrait, instead of aging, simply fades away.

Kate Greenville does a wonderful job developing the characters ,especially of the vile Albin. He is seen as a man with no inner self, no moral's and finally no real point in his life. Not a " fun" read,still I had no time to notice this until the end as I was so caught up in the passage of a family into disintergration.

This book is a useful resource; it provides exercises that get one's creativity flowing, as well as some very practical and thoughtful advice on how to polish works in progress. Better still, it doesn't just stick to conventional formulas when discussing the elements of a short story or novel; Grenville provides examples from both traditional and experimental approaches to storytelling.

This is a must have guide for anyone wanting to write. Shows us how to let it flow. Lots of exercises for budding authors within.

In this memoir, Kate Grenville provides some insights into both the drafting of her novel `The Secret River' and her search for her family history. Ms Grenville is a descendant of early settler Solomon Wiseman. She had grown up knowing the outline of his story: his arrival in Sydney as a convict in 1806, the establishment of his business on the Hawkesbury River (from which Wiseman's Ferry takes its name).

The first part of this book is Ms Grenville's personal quest for Wiseman through the records of the Society of Genealogists and the Public Records Office. Identifying the `right' late 18th century Solomon Wiseman is not easy and ultimately Ms Grenville supplements her search through the formal records with her own sense of Solomon Wiseman's presence at Three Cranes Wharf.

Ms Grenville also seeks to obtain a sense of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Hawkesbury at the time they were dispossessed of their land by Wiseman. She does this through returning to the river, which she had first visited as a short-sighted child. Now, as an adult she is able to see and to sense the past more clearly. Some of Ms Grenville's most vivid writing is of the landscape, especially of the river itself. In many ways, it is this description of the landscape which joins the novel to this book more than the people and the history.

In the second part of the book, Ms Grenville describes the process of creating her novel: describing the struggle involved in blending fact, fiction and physical description to bring the characters and the period to life.

I enjoyed reading this book for the insights into the writing of `The Secret River'.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

In this memoir, Kate Grenville provides some insights into both the drafting of her novel `The Secret River' and her search for her family history. Ms Grenville is a descendant of early settler Solomon Wiseman. She had grown up knowing the outline of his story: his arrival in Sydney as a convict in 1806, the establishment of his business on the Hawkesbury River (from which Wiseman's Ferry takes its name).

The first part of this book is Ms Grenville's personal quest for Wiseman through the records of the Society of Genealogists and the Public Records Office. Identifying the `right' late 18th century Solomon Wiseman is not easy and ultimately Ms Grenville supplements her search through the formal records with her own sense of Solomon Wiseman's presence at Three Cranes Wharf.

Ms Grenville also seeks to obtain a sense of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Hawkesbury at the time they were dispossessed of their land by Wiseman. She does this through returning to the river, which she had first visited as a short-sighted child. Now, as an adult she is able to see and to sense the past more clearly. Some of Ms Grenville's most vivid writing is of the landscape, especially of the river itself. In many ways, it is this description of the landscape which joins the novel to this book more than the people and the history.

In the second part of the book, Ms Grenville describes the process of creating her novel: describing the struggle involved in blending fact, fiction and physical description to bring the characters and the period to life.

I enjoyed reading this book for the insights into the writing of `The Secret River'.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Just finished The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville which won the Orange Prize a few years ago (against stiff competition) and have to confess to being slightly puzzled by it. She writes deftly and Karakook, the small town in New South Wales where it is set, is very effectively evoked. The story is about Harley and Douglas two slightly stunted, frightened middle-aged people who find in eachother a tentative romance. This central relationship is powerfully delivered and genuinely moving, but a third of the book is given over to the affair taking place between the town's butcher and the bank manager's wife ... it goes nowhere, reveals nothing and is a very very odd distraction. Or so it seemed to me. The rest of the book is so well written that I feel it has to have been me failing to see the link: was it just an unhappy counterpoint? a comment on unhappiness behind the facade of a successful marriage? what??? it really bothered me though and I just kept thinking why is Grenville wasting words on this. Hmmm. I guess it is a testament to the book that I want to know what it is that I missed.

Having read a few glowing reviews and recommendations for this book, I was surprised and disappointed in it. The plot is so transparent that the reader knows precisely what will happen, that is, once s/he has finally waded through the disjointed descriptions of the characters.
As a writer, I was most confounded by the fact that the author fails to observe even that most basic rule of punctuation -- the use of quotation marks to separate dialogue from narrative. I found this to be a significant obstacle to the flow of the story, often having to look back in the text to figure out exactly what was happening. Another impediment to understanding the story was the ubiquitous Aussie slang. While this would obviously not be a problem for the Australian reader, those of us who are unfamiliar with much beyond "throwing a shrimp on the barbie" would have benefitted greatly from footnotes or a glossary.
I found the characters to be one-dimensional, each one little more than the sum of his or her neuroses. Throughout most of the story I found myself caring more about the dog than the human characters. It was hard to believe that these were supposed to be adults instead of teenagers.
The so-called climax of the story comes almost at the very end. This allows for only a very perfunctory denouement.
I had to force myself to continue reading this book, and I felt much as I did when doing required reading for school. Had I not bought the book, and instead borrowed it from the library, I doubt that I'd have persevered.

"The Idea of Perfection." That's the theme of this book, really, the concept about which the entire story turns. Harley and Douglas are imperfect and they know it, and they don't expect their lives to get any closer to perfection, so they've given up on certain things. Felicity is obsessed with perfection (going toward OCD behavior) and has the most messed-up life of the three of them. Harley's quilts are imperfect on purpose, as if to not give them the burden of being faultless, to free them to live the life she herself lives. Ironically, she has to work very hard to keep the quilts from perfection.

I greatly enjoyed this book, which is wonderful since I just randomly chose it off the library shelf. If you enjoy books that express the way people really think and live, regardless of country, then give this one a chance.

This is ostensibly a love story, with two professionals from the city forming an unlikely bond when they are thrown together in a small country town. However, the relationship between the two is only one of many in this well written book. The chapters alternate between the viewpoints of the main characters to develop a well-rounded portrait of all concerned.

Karakarook, like many small Australian country towns, has been left behind - they highway doesn't run through town anymore, the bank will soon close its branch, and any industries that supported the town have long gone. Many in the town are pinning their hopes on 'Heritage', which gives a reason for one half of the city partnership, Harley, to be there. She has come from Sydney to organise a museum. She also becomes involved in the fight over another heritage flash point - the old Bent Bridge.

Bent Bridge is the reason for the other city person to be in town. Douglas is the engineer tasked with organising the replacement of the bridge. Harley and Douglas have their stories told alternately with that of a third - Felicity, the flighty wife of the bank manager. All three are outsiders - not just in the sense that they have arrived in Karakarook from elsewhere, but they also don't quite belong in the society in which they live. Also, all three have been deeply marked by their backgrounds - Harley forever trying to live up to the expectations of her famous creative family; Douglas living in the shadow of a war hero father he never met; and Felicity trying to forget her humble background while clinging to youthful beauty. Grenville is a skilful enough writer to allude to the importance of these details, while not overburdening the reader with too much character history. Like the other aspects of the book, the author credits the reader with enough intelligence to see the points she is making with being too strident. This is a delight.

The fourth main character in the story is the town itself - its history, the lives lived there day-by-day, its physical characteristics. Having lived in more than one small Australian country town, this really rang true for me, and Grenville manages to reign in the 'big town' superiority in her depiction. I was also happily surprised to see the inclusion of a lot of Australian words that the author didn't bother to explain - this is interesting to see in a book that was probably written with an international audience in mind.

"The Idea of Perfection" won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001 (a British literary award of distinction) and I can see why. It is very different, very moving, and is the type of book that doesn't allow the reader to forget its haunting atmosphere.

Although the flyleaf on the hardback version calls it a "funny and touching romance..." I found nothing funny about it whatsoever, and what romance there is, is largely in the torturedly shy minds of two of the two awkward protagonists: big-boned, plain and shy Harley Savage, and equally shy and plain Douglas Cheeseman. Harley has come to the tiny Australian Bush village of Karakarook to set up a "heritage museum" of local crafts (she is a renowned craftsperson in her own right and lives in Sydney); Douglas, an engineer, has come to demolish and rebuild a Karakarook icon: the "twisted bridge." These two unlikely people meet and are attracted to one another, but are so terribly awkward and shy that they cannot possibly express anything other than "wrong" smiles and comments.

A subplot involves the wife of the banker, whose inner self is focused solely on keeping herself young with various beauty products, certainly NOT on the Chinese butcher to whom she is powerfully attracted. Certain reviews found this subplot specious and/or funny; I did not. It had a hysterical edge to it that exactly matched the inner terrible turmoil of the wife, whose empty existence in Karakarook has obviously driven her to the edge of madness.

A truly outstanding book; a work of art. I'm glad I read it.