Product Description

Customer Reviews (48)

A fascinating dreamlike tale
The discovery and subsequent colonization of Australia is a fascinating story.Considered the end of the earth by England, it was deemed the perfect dumping ground for the unwanted criminals crowding their jails.Both convicts and captors were delivered to this harsh land largely naïve about what lay before them.
The Lieutenant centers around a young lieutenant on the First Fleet, Daniel Rook.Rook is an intelligent oddball, more comfortable with numbers than people, who reluctantly accepts his duties as the price he must pay to study the stars.He sets up his encampment in an isolated spot best suited for his work, and constructs an observatory.He would chart the stars, and wait for the appearance of a comet he had calculated would pass by within months.He finds himself interested in the indigenous people he rarely sees, and wonders how to communicate with them.His lonely spot proves an advantage as some indigenous girls hesitantly approach him, fascinated.They have their own dialect and chatter amongst themselves as he struggles to understand them.With time, he comes to know them, and one girl in particular with whom he becomes very fond.He attempts to record the language with the hope of someday deciphering the code.His connection with Tagaran goes beyond language, and he views her much as the younger sister he left behind in England.
Rook is reminded that he is a soldier first, an astronomer second.Any relationship he desires with the local indigenous people will always be hampered by his position in the military that views all outsiders as potential enemies.
Grenville has done a masterful job of telling Rook's story.Based on the true story ofEnglish scholar/soldier William Dawes who recorded the first translations of the language of the people of the Sydney area,Grenville did her extensive research into his life, and his friendship with a young indigenous girl, Patyegarang.Recreating a life we can all barely imagine is a difficult task, and Grenville has made it an enjoyable and interesting read.As with all stories regarding this part of history, there is always conflict, and sadness arising from the lack of understanding of one people toward another.By not leaving it out, this story feels genuine.
Readers of historical fiction will enjoy this.Well done.

A Bit Of History, And More
In "The Lieutenant", Kate Grenville has taken a set of historical facts, and crafted an interesting and engaging story to bring history alive.Of course, this is a work of fiction, and the story, though plausible, is by no means to be taken as fact.That such a disclaimer is necessary, speaks to the quality of the story that Kate Grenville has written, for one could easily believe the narrative in this novel to be real.

While there are many works of literature which take place in historic times, "The Lieutenant" enters into the sub-genre of historical fiction by using historical fact as the framework for the entire story rather than just dressing.The story is that of Daniel Rooke, a man who is based on the historical figure William Dawes, a Lieutenant who was a scholar in astronomy, math, and languages, as the author indicates in her "Author's Note" at the end of the book.Rooke/Dawes is sent on the first fleet mission to Australia which established the first colony at Sydney.

Rooke was sent on the mission to look for a comet and keep a log of his observations.When the comet doesn't show up, he begins to work on a book describing the native language.His conversations with a young native girl, called Tagaran in this story, but based on Patyegarang from the historical record, would result in the leading book on the native language for the area around Sydney.The story covers Rooke's relationship with his fellow countrymen, as well as his interactions with the native population.

Kate Grenville wisely gives the characters fictional names, because though it there is a historical framework, clearly many of the details and the personal interactions and perspectives are clearly not factual and some of the events are certainly fictional as well.That being said, one can learn a bit about the early history of Europeans in Australia from this book, and the brief, but very informative author's note at the end helps the reader to know what is historical, and what isn't.

Cultural Exchange Doomed to Failure
This was a sensitive take on the history of Australia's introduction to the Europeans. Told from the point of view of the exploratory crew's astronomer, the Englishmen come ashore anxious to meet the natives only to be avoided interminably by the people living there. The leutenant, who has managed, by claiming to need a good view of the nightsky, to live apart from his fellows does make aquaintance with three aboriginal children, one of whom, a teenage girl, becomes his friend and lanaguage exchange partner. His simple happy life learning the languages and gazing at stars is shattered, as we living now know from the beginning it will be, by the shenanigans of his countrymen and their need to impose themselves on the reluctant Natives.

Beautifully crafted love story
I have waited months to write this review in hopes that I could articulate how powerfully this book moved me.I will never be able to do justice to this book, but I at least want to get the five-star review down for the record!

From the artwork on the cover that captures the heavens to the beautifully imperfect characters that capture what it means to love as an imperfect person in an imperfect world...I was simply engrossed and enraptured by this book.I wept huge heartfelt tears as the vastness and tenderness and pureness of the love portrayed by the characters in this book was revealed.

As someone with a dear loved one with Asperger's Syndrome, I was especially appreciative of how the main character (Daniel Rooke, based on William Dawes) was so beautifully portrayed in all his idiosyncratic, unique wonderfulness.He marches through the book to a distant drummer that only he can hear, brilliantly gifted celestially and mathematically, blessed with a pure love for a people and place very different from his own.

This book was a joy and is one I will treasure and read again.

A love story
This book was a sensative love story for me. It was a story about The Lieutenant's love of language, his love of the heavens, and his love of this bright foreign girl.It was for me a socialogical study of how we relate to the people of the world and the role that language, both verbal and body language, connect us.

It is fascinating that the female author could write about how a male would feel in these situations. The author researched this historical period and made history come alive for me. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (50)

Bravo
I love you, Kate Grenville.They should make this book into a movie.Honestly.

A truthful story of a white settler in Australia
by Kate Grenville is a life story of an English bargeman William Thornhill. Beginning with Thornhill's childhood and youth at London, the novel moves on to Sydney, where he is deported as a part of his "lenient" sentence, and then finally to "unclaimed" land in Australia that Thornhill loves and struggles to claim as his own.
Grenville gave enough information and builds a very strong basis for the Thornhill character by describing his poor, perilous childhood and youth life as a bargeman of River Thames and a thief in London. Having nearly lost his life for stealing, Thornhill becomes different character in New South Wales, a remote colony established for pardoned convicts like him. From the bottom of the society with a tag of convict, Thornhill earns his freedom, makes money, and even own two slaves to work for him in his own land. Although he occasionally despair from British officers' contempt and his beloved wife Sal's wish of going back to hopeless London life, Thornhill finds hope in this new land and wishes to own it for all time. Encounter with the Aborigines, the natives who seems to be always lurking in forests, and potential conflict with his wife who wants to return to London, in addition to his external relationship with other fellow white settlers in the area, complicates the storyline and eventually completes Thornhill's characterization as reluctant yet evident model for a colonist, probably representing most of actual white settlers in Australian history.
As the novel focused on Thornhills' settlement in the island and particularly Thornhill's internal conflicts between his own ambition and his role as a father and a husband, it successfully portrayed the early encounter & conflicts between white settlers and Australian natives, and conflicts between the settlers themselves (as we can see from other settlers' hatred for Blackwood who has local wife). Furthermore, the author pointed out the consequences of such colonization - Thornhill (the white settlers) becomes rich in the end, but he does not feel triumphed at all and just feeling it is too late. On the other hand, one of the black survivors (the Aborigines) shows his fierce defiance even in his hopeless state after the defeat, no better than a beggar. Maybe this represents the late realization of the forgotten true nature of Australian history, stained with conflict and expulsion of the Aborigines by the colonists.

Struggle and survival in Australia
It's 1806 London, and William Thornhill has just been granted a second chance at life. Sentenced to hang for stealing wood, he's been given a last-minute reprieve. Instead of death, he and his family (wife Sal and young son Willie) are to be sent to the penal colony of New South Wales, Australia.

William quickly adjusts to Australia, and begins to see possibilities for himself that never existed in London. Meanwhile, Sal is (literally) counting down the days until they can get enough money saved up to return back to England. As their family increases through the years, William seizes the chance to claim land along the Hawkesbury River. With this land comes a group of neighbors he didn't bargain for: Aborigines. As the story moves on, the Thornhills and the Aborigines come to conflict over the land they both feel they have the right to.

This book had the potential to be masterpiece. The story itself is so compelling, and the way Grenville phrases some things--especially towards the end--is wonderful. Yet, the book still felt a bit shaky to me in parts. Years pass by in just a few paragraphs, and are basically skipped over. It was almost jarring. Don't get me wrong; I still thought this was a very good book (and rated it a 4.25/5), but I think it could've been even so much more.

A Compelling Work of Fiction About Convict Life In Australia
"The Secret River" by Kate Greenville is a work of fiction placing William Thornhill and his family in colonial Australia in the early 19th century. After working as a laborer on the Thames River in London, Thornhill is caught trying to steal a precious piece of cargo from his boss and is sentenced to live a life in the harsh lands of Australia. While working for Thomas Blackwood in and around Botany Bay, Thornhill comes upon the realization that what he wants most in the world is to own a piece of land where he can settle down with his family.
I found this book to be very entertaining. Greenville developed the characters in a realistic way, only hinting at their feelings and dreams and leaving much interpretation up to the reader. The plot was also developed in a believable way that made it hard to put the book down. The conflicts with the blacks, the neighbors, and the landscape were woven together to create a powerful climax and a satisfying conclusion.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who not only wants to learn more about convict life in Australia, but to anyone who is looking for an entertaining, compelling novel about a man yearning to make a life for himself and for his family in an unforgiving land.

A skillfully written, deeply sad tale
Kate Grenville is a very good writer, and The Secret River is an exceptionally well-written book. Grenville creates for us believable, fully human characters in Will and Sal Thornhill. Both are fully realised and sympathetic characters, which is no mean feat considering that they lived two hundred years ago in a world we can hardly imagine today. Grenville manages to give a wonderful idiomatic flavour of the speech and physicality of the time and its people without ever descending into caricature.
As an Australian reading this book, I was familiar with the convict/settlement mythos that permeates a lot of our culture, and so have what I suppose is a greater familiarity than international readers with the politics and ongoing public debate surrounding the invasion and colonisation of this country by white settlers. Grenville does what I think is an amazing thing for an Australian - she presents us a tragedy but illuminates it from both perspectives, that of the dispossessed and the dispossessor. While I felt heartbroken and outraged for the indigenous characters, I could also understand the motivations of the English settlers and what drove them to their actions. You can really feel Will Thornhill's longing for a place to call his own, his genuine love for the land he claims, his horror at the life he came from and its grinding poverty; you can feel his not-quite-recognised self-disgust at the choices he makes in achieving that aim; you can somehow not hate him, regardless of his unforgivable actions.
Grenville has also managed to give a sense of the indigenous characters as completely human and fully sympathetic. Despite being limited by describing the people and their lives from Thornhill's point of view, we see the "savages" not as savages but as a people with lives, motivations and desires that are being steadily pushed aside and nullified by the white settlers.
Some years ago I came to the conclusion that, despite what I was taught (and not taught) in school and what I heard around me in mainstream Australian culture, the white settlement of this country was really an invasion. It's not something anyone ever would have said when I was growing up, but if I came from another country and someone told me what had happened here, it's the only way I could describe it. Grenville's book allowed me to really feel, as I had not really felt before, a strong sense of the emotional reality of that. As Sal says to Will, "They was here, like we was in London" - meaning, this was their home, the way London was Sal's.
I generally don't like reviews that reflect on the social aspects of a particular book but given my background it's pretty nigh impossible for me to see this story outside of my upbringing and experience. To try to combat that, to comment on the writing - the language is perfectly measured and economical, with no wasted words and the occasionally vivid turn of phrase that renders the experience of reading a powerful sensual experience; in particular Grenville's description of the Australian landscape is wonderfully evocative. The dialogue, despite the idiomatic language, never feels stilted or strained; Grenville is a master of her craft. In terms of length and pace, the novel feels much longer than it is, and would be difficult to absorb in one sitting because of its halting pace, but does not drag - the pacing suits Thornhill's slow and imperfect journey of self-understanding.
The climax of the novel is heartbreaking and the denouement filled me with such a profound sense of regret I found my eyes filling with tears. Grenville's written this story in such a way that it struck me as a true tragedy - the outcome for Thornhill and for the indigenous people he encounters could not have ended otherwise, given what his life had shaped him into, and given their circumstances, driven from their home - but the greatest achievement of Grenville's novel is, I think, that she tells us this story as a tragedy but then contradicts what she has written by seeming to say, at the end, "This did not have to be" - Thornhill in his deepest self wishes it had been otherwise, and reading what could have been the story of my ancestors I felt the same, a huge longing that it had been some other way. The novel leaves a sense of aching regret in the reader that lingers long after closing the book. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Kate Grenville is cool!
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.

A great investment for writers
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 toconventional formulas when discussing the elements of a short story ornovel; Grenville provides examples from both traditional and experimentalapproaches to storytelling. ... Read more

Product Description
Harley Savage is a plain woman, a part-time museum curator and quilting expert with three failed marriages and a heart condition. Douglas Cheeseman is a shy, gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, one marriage gone sour, and a crippling lack of physical courage. They meet in the little Australian town of Karakarook, where Harley has arrived to help the town build a heritage museum and Douglas to demolish the quaint old Bent Bridge. From the beginning they are on a collision course until the unexpected sets them both free.

Elegantly and compassionately told, The Idea of Perfection is reminiscent of the work of Carol Shields and Annie Proulx and reveals Kate Grenville as "a writer of extraordinary talent" (The New York Times Book Review). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Mattress ticking?
What is mattress ticking?The author uses this term in her first sentence, and even after Googling, including Google IMAGES, I'm really not sure.

Images of mattress ticking include everything from the frowsy cotton-ballish stuff that I'm familiar with as a "mattress cover," to some really beautiful silky-looking fabrics, with intricate floral designs, which a Chinese manufacturer advertises as "mattress ticking."

Thus my confusion, fellow readers:right from the beginning I'm having trouble understanding this little story.If this is Australian slang, or even just British slang, please Kate include a glossary, lol. In the context of the story, mattress ticking is considered a sort of funky curtain material.Which confuses me even more.I'm American and the mattress covers I'm familiar with would look something like diapers hanging from the window rod."Diapers" being "knappies," all you Brits out there -- see how confusing it can get?

This is a pleasant book, but rather knock-kneed and odd. Some of Ms. Grenville's other books are wonderful because they bring Australia to the reader, rather than having the reader huff and puff to keep up with oddities in a small town in Oz.I'm a Grenville fan, but I would start with her historical novels of Australia before reading this.Kate Grenville is awesome, but read something like "The Secret River" first.

Excellent prose but...
I highly commend Kate Grenville for her artistic writing talent. I greatly appreciated the way she crafted the story - putting together sentences that spoke directly to me as experiences I have had but could never have put so beautifully into words. I found the writing and main plot profoundly enjoyable and I would venture to guess that most readers would recognize a bit of themselves in any one of the main characters.

The only drawback for me was the subplot of the housewife and the butcher - I understand the psychology behind it relative to the title of the book but for the same reasons I don't watch Desperate Housewives - Iuncomfortably skimmed over those pages.

Sorry Kate, not a prude, just thought it took away from the beauty of the main story. I prefer some things left to my imagination.

Culture Shock
Were it not for the setting in rural New South Wales and all the Australian slang, I would have taken Kate Grenville for an English writer. For she perfectly captures that peculiarly English comedy of social awkwardness, and people trying (and generally failing) to be something that they are not. Most of the book is written in interior monologues, as the characters question, harangue, or despair of themselves. The comedy comes over best in her portrayal of Felicity Porcelline, the upwardly-mobile wife of the bank manager in the little town of Karakarook, driven by a self-imposed need to Set Standards (capitals and italics for clichés are very much a part of Grenville's style). Here she is thinking about the local butcher, Albert Chang, whom she thinks of as not quite Australian:

"Partly it was that the butcher was Chinese. She was no racist, and wanted him to know that she did not count it against him, him being Chinese. The trouble was, not wanting to be though racist always seemed to make her too friendly. She could hear that her voice was a little too loud and a little too sprightly in the quiet shop. She smiled too much, and did not know how to stop. She was no racist, but noticed, every time he spoke, how he spoke exactly the way everyone else did...."

Felicity, a relatively minor character, exemplifies the Idea of Perfection in the title, even rationing her smiles so as not to cause wrinkles on her skin. The inner-monologue approach is very funny in her scenes, but it becomes tiresome when constantly applied to the major characters also. The two protagonists, professionals down from Sydney, are at first disconcerted by the free and easy ways of most of the town, and for a long time the book plays out as city/country culture shock. But it turns out that the two are on opposite sides of a cultural divide within the town itself. Harley Savage, a museum expert and quilter, and fiercely independent veteran of three marriages, comes to advise the town on a Heritage Museum. Douglas Cheeseman, a divorced engineer, is in charge of tearing down a wooden bridge that is the town's main source of charm. Eventually, as the book jacket will tell you, they will come to accept their own imperfections and fall in love, though it takes a while. So this is an amusing book, but sadly a slight one.

the perfection burden
"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.

Not quite convinced
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. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Amazing Survival
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 isa true survivor when all the odds are against her. I would recommend thisto anyone.

moving
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, sherejects the conformism of her upper-class upbringing and becomes anoutspoken street person A fictionalised account of the life and times ofthe late Bea Miles, well known Sydney eccentric ... Read more

Product Description
Ideal for writing a short story, essay, review, or report, this guide provides beginning writers with the hands-on direction they need to improve their writing techniques and ability. Using a six-step approach to writing, this resource covers brainstorming ideas, choosing a topic, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing. The tone is casual, the advice is straightforward, and the whole approach makes writing a skill that anyone can learn. Illustrations reinforce the ideas visually and help to break up the text into bite-sized chunks. An example section with worked examples of two kinds of writing-a creative writing piece and an essay-takes readers through the six steps, so they can watch writing develop from a blank page to a finished piece. Ideal for high school students but also appropriate for writers of all ages, this book also includes tips on user-friendly grammar, a table of different types of text, and a quick night-before-the-exam summary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ideal for aspiring writers
Whenever you write, whatever you write, getting started is generally the hardest part of the process.

Most established writers develop a routine - it may be a ritual they complete before settling into their work, it may be a certain literary approach to their writing. Whatever it is, it has usually evolved after spending an inordinate amount of time staring at a blank screen.

For many newcomers, however, writing remains a mysterious process that inexplicably occurs.

Fortunately for these writers, help is at hand in the form of a new how-to book from Kate Grenville, an award-winning novelist who has run writing workshops in universities in the US and Australia since 1981.

Grenville's approach to writing, as detailed in `Writing From Start to Finish', is different from many others. Instead of thinking ahead of writing, she prefers to reverse the process, by allowing the mind to "roam around the topic in a free-form way".

This is the time, she says, to explore the topic, making a few notes as you go. Once you have enough literary titbits, you can begin placing them in some kind of order, expanding upon some and deleting others. By this time, "the process of creating and the process of judging" are separate.

So, once the writer has written, the internal editor is free to edit. Too often, as Grenville argues, the situation is reversed by thinking before writing.

`Writing From Start to Finish' simplifies the process of writing and presents it as six steps that can be applied to a novel, essay or report. They are:

* Getting ideas (in no particular order)
* Choosing (selecting the most useful ideas)
* Outlining (putting these ideas into order - making a plan)
* Drafting (writing a first draft, from beginning to end, without going back)
* Revising (cutting, adding or moving parts of this draft where necessary)
* Editing (proof-reading for grammar, spelling and meaning)

Each step is demonstrated by two sample pieces of writing - a story and an essay - which evolve through the course of the book. At the end of the book, the reader will have achieved a polished piece of writing.

There are many writing books available, but if you're looking for a user-friendly introduction to the craft, Grenville's book will ease you in gently and guide you along the way.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'.For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com ... Read more

Product Description
'A writer of extraordinary talent' - "New York Times". Albion Gidley Singer appears an entirely proper man: husband, father, pillar of the community. But he is a hollow man, and within him are frightened and frighteningly dark places from which spring loathing and fear of female flesh. And the kind of violence that might call itself love. "Dark Places" tells the story of this man - two parts monster to one part buffoon - and of his growing obsession. As the horror mounts, we gain a terrifying glimpse of the male ego's dark side, and of the destruction it can wreak upon itself and others. Yet at the same time Kate Grenville keeps alive the reader's sympathy for this doomed figure. This is a novel that fearlessly confronts the aspects of ourselves from which we normally recoil. 'An eloquent, angry and humane novel...A very fine, albeit terrifying, writer' - "Irish Times". 'Remarkable' - "Guardian". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Very Bizarre Turn of 20th Century Aussie Tale!
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!

Well written but one dimensional
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.

Clear brilliant writing
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

slightly disappointed
The Secret River is the story starting with a boy, then the man who is less than some but better than most,and his family making it from terrible times in London to success in Australia. The book is very well written, makes it pretty clear what Australian life was like during the time of early colonization by transported prisoners, and also has some beautiful descriptions of the land.HOWEVER, the progression of the story is so predictable, rags to riches, and even a bit plodding, that I give it merely 3 stars. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
15 essays by leading writers, feminists. covers commonwealth literature, attention to themes and ethnicity, views of women, by authors such as Atwood, Gordimer, Hulme, Grenville and new writers such as Manju Kapoor, Monica Ali and Chandini Lokuge ... Read more

Product Description
Good writers make writing look easy - but is it? Anyone learning to write should be encouraged by "Making Stories" - it shows that even our greatest novelists come to their books by a long and uncertain process. "Making Stories" shows ten acclaimed Australian authors at work, painstakingly constructing their books from rough notes, dimly-glimpsed ideas, and trial and error. By referring to extracts from drafts and published versions of their novels, each author candidly discusses how they work, taking the reader step-by-step through the creative process to share the invisible hours of toil that shape a work of fiction. All faced problems and doubts, and solved them in a sometimes startling way. Admirers of the novels used in "Making Stories" will be interested by the behind-the-scenes work that brought them about. Each writer's section contains: an extract from an early draft - sometimes just a rough note on a scrap of paper; a corresponding extract from the published book, showing how this early material was finally used; and an interview with the writer about the progress that took them from that early writing to the published book.Featured writers include Jessica Anderson, Peter Carey, Helen Garner, Thomas Keneally, David Ireland, Elizabeth Jolley, Finola Moorhead and Patrick White, as well as the two authors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Refreshingly different from typical American writing book
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.


... Read more

Product Description
This novel is concerned with the mystery and menace underpinning everyday life, focusing on Louise and Rennie whose dreamhouse, a decaying Tuscan villa is, in reality, the stuff of nightmares. However, as the long, hot summer and the story progresses, Louise's life begins to ripen with new and unconventional possibilities. Kate Grenville is the author of a collection of short stories and the novel "Lillian's story". ... Read more

Product Description
In this "startling, fasciniating, disturbing" (Library Journal) companion to Lilian's Story, Kate Grenville takes on a daunting challenge: to imagine, from the inside out, how an apparently respectable Victorian gentleman can persuade himself that he has a right, perhaps even a "manly" duty to rape any woman under his control: his shopgirls, his servants, his wife, even his daughter. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Albion Unzipped
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.

Albion's Story
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Kate Grenville's The Secret River was one of the most loved novels of 2006. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the story of William Thornhill and his journey from London to the other side of the world has moved and exhilarated hundreds of thousands of readers. Searching for the Secret River tells the story of how Grenville came to write this wonderful book. It is in itself an amazing story, beginning with Grenville's great-great-great grandfather. Grenville starts to investigate her ancestor, hoping to understand his life. She pursues him from Sydney to London and back, and slowly she begins to realise she must write about him. Searching for the Secret River maps this creative journey into fiction, and illuminates the importance of family in all our lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Informative Background to The Secret River
This is an interesting book about the research that goes into writing an historical novel. My intention in reading it was to beef up a book club presentation on The Secret River(which it did).Grenville writes about the stylistic choices she made in writing The Secret River. She also shares the truth about the characters one meets in the novel. As a stand alone story, the book feels a bit forced, but as a sequel to her novel it is very worth reading.

Much more than "a writing memoir"
Anybody who has read Kate Grenville's award winning The Secret River is bound to be curious about the parallels between Grenville's real ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, and the fictional William Thornhill, both convicts shipped off from London to Australia in the beginning of the nineteenth century. While starting out to write a biography of her great-great-great grandfather, what research did she embark on, what discoveries and mental processes led her in the end to move from a biography to a work of historical fiction?The author, honest, self-aware and self-critical, takes the reader on a fascinating journey into her mind, her feelings and analyses of people and places.Also, and of equal interest to those who have not (yet) read the novel, this "writer's memoir" is an enjoyable "how to" guide for any personal writing project. It contains a few "mantras about writing", such as "never start with a blank page", or "don't wait for time to write", etc. Grenville, who also teaches creative writing, walks the talk herself and the insights she shares with her readers make this a very personal and engaging story.

I use the term "story" deliberately as it reads much more like a story of discovery and less as a writer's guide or even a "memoir".Her exquisite style and rich language that evoke landscapes and city-scapes in such vivid colours and detail that you feel you are walking along with her. Her research into the real great-great-great grandfather was not straight forward, of course, as records were scarce, family stories were not factual and there were numerous Solomon W. and dozens of Wisemans living in London around the same time in the same part of town... How she narrows down her search is also a guide for anybody interested in their own family genealogy - just fascinating. One aspect that helped her later on in her writing (and the reader of the novel will recognize them): she picked up small mementoes, stood on the spot where she imagined her ancestor had been standing. As soon as she made the connection, she can feel him, get under his skin. Only then doesthe character develop his own persona and as author she has to accept that she follows and he controls.

Immense amount of research spanning several years resulted in filling one major gap in her knowledge or imagination after another. Recreating the language of working class people and fishermen as spoken in the late seventeen nineties was another challenge Grenville had to deal with: Solomon was not literate but later historical documents suggest that he learned to write, although in a stilted, ungrammatical sort of way.While the author made remarkable progress on the male side of her family, the female side, her great-great-great grandmother remained a mystery to her for the longest time. Few information snippets existed in the family archive and memory... so what to do?Her answer, after several false starts, is intriguing, and not only from the perspective of the novel's character development.

The most difficult part of her search and research, however, was to imagine how the real Solomon Wiseman reacted to and interacted with the Aborigines when he and his young family first arrived in Australia. In investigating what might have happened, Grenville realized that she herself lacked much information and knowledge about the life of the aboriginal peoples of her country. Her learning path in this field is deeply moving as she gently and subtly explores what happened at the time of early confrontation and what could have been Wiseman's role in these encounters. For her own life it was another voyage of discovery.

This "writing memoir" is such a beautifully and engagingly written book that it should be seen as an essential compendium for those who read THE SECRET RIVER. For others it is still a great read and probably a motivation to pick up the novel afterwards.[Friederike Knabe]

A glimpse into processes and pasts
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
... Read more