Rose Tremain

The Colour by Rose Tremain is an exceedingly well written historical fiction novel with a strong story, well developed characters and an interesting setting. This is the story of Harriet and Joseph Blackstone who marry and come to New Zealand full of hope and determination to forge a homestead from the wilds of New Zealand’s Southern Island. Joseph’s mother, Lillian, is a reluctant addition to this small family, she despises the isolation and would far rather be making her home in the show more town of Christchurch. Joseph and Harriet barely know each other, Joseph needs a wife to help create the new life he envisions while Harriet is escaping her unmarried life as a governess.

The layers and secrets of each character are slowly revealed throughout the course of the story. Love never develops between Harriet and Joseph, instead Joseph loses both his head and his heart to gold fever and he eventually abandons both his mother and his wife for the gold fields. Harriet and Lillian carry on but their homestead is doomed. Harriet then follows Joseph to the gold fields but this strong and resourceful woman soon finds her life heading in a new direction.

The author delves deep into her characters to reveal their motivations, hopes and desires. We learn very quickly that Joseph lacks strength of character and purpose and that Harriet is very clever and has a core strength of iron. Joseph spends most of his time feeling regretful of all that he has done yet continues to avoid any confrontation. Harriet, who soon sees Joseph for what he is, is on a voyage of self-discovery. While the story is generally rather melancholy, the author writes in such a way that the reader is totally transported to late 19th Century New Zealand. The supporting characters are all realistic and interesting and help in building the layers that abound in this rich historical novel. show less

In 1864, Joseph Blackstone, his new wife Harriet, and his mother Lilian emigrated from England to New Zealand in search of a better life. Lilian, recently widowed, pines for her former lifestyle and resents having to live on their remote farm. But at the same time, she also hopes to rise above her station, and is disappointed to encounter familiar class barriers in New Zealand:
The familiar feeling of being snubbed -- a feeling she'd thought belonged only to England, where the disdain of the show more upper classes infected every encounter -- made Lilian want to weep, or, worse, give Dorothy Orchard a vicious swipe across her badly coiffed head. Lilian was particularly vexed by the knowledge that she never understood exactly how people like Dorothy Orchard achieved their instantaneous mastery over others outside their class. It happened before you noticed it, like a perfectly executed card trick. (p. 78)

Joseph is arrogant and stubborn, refusing to listen to advice from the locals on where to build his house, and what materials to use. Joseph and Harriet have an odd relationship. Joseph has a secret in his past, and married for all the wrong reasons. It's not clear what they see in one another, and it doesn't take long for Harriet to realize she will never truly love Joseph:
For day by day, she kept secret from him her own lovelessness. It piled up in her. At times, it was not merely lack of love that she felt; it was hatred of the blackest kind. And though she struggled to conceal it from him, perhaps she succeeded no better than he did with his blatant heaps of earth? In the nights, she often awoke at first light to see him staring at her, his eye close to hers, his fists clenched around the sheets. Did he know that she did not love him? Did he understand all too clearly that she loved the wilderness he had brought her to, but not him? (p. 95)

Yet both Harriet and Lilian are committed to making their farm a success, even after Joseph finds gold in a nearby creek and decides to join the hundreds of other men seeking their fortunes in New Zealand's gold rush. Circumstances eventually force Harriet to go off on her own, in search of Joseph.

The story is told from alternating points of view with chapters narrated by Harriet, Joseph, and a couple of other characters who weave nicely into the storyline. Joseph turns out to be an arrogant and hapless loner, unable to relate to women and desperate to please his mother by accumulating wealth. Harriet is strong and independent, undaunted by Joseph's failings and refusing to bow to societal expectations of women. It is only through Harriet's intelligence that the couple have any chance of finding gold and making something of their lives together.

But that's only part of this story; Rose Tremain has more to say than "just" historical drama laced with love. She also shows how the quest for gold took its toll on the land and destroyed both individuals and communities. Those who are untouched by greed and continued leading simple lives were by far the happiest and, one could argue, the most successful. show less

At the start of The Road Home, Lev has boarded a bus from his Eastern European village where the main employer has closed down. With the expansion of the EU, he is travelling to the UK ("I am legal" is one of the English phrases he has committed to memory) in order to earn money for his mother and his daughter (his wife has recently died of leukaemia). In London, he encounters much that is unfamiliar, but also begins to build friendships, particularly with Lydia, a compatriot he met on the show more bus, and his Irish landlord Christy, whose ex-wife is preventing him having access to their child.

The touching relationship between these two lonely men, both missing their daughters but wishing to do the best by them, is one of the highlights of the book (at least, of the part I managed to read). There's also a nice thread about language and jargon - Lev has had English lessons before coming to the UK but is baffled by the language of job advertisements and room-for-rent notices, of self-improving business-speak, of the posh restaurant where he gets a job in the kitchen.

But.

This book was highly praised for giving humanity to the anonymous figure of the immigrant. Christy, too, could be another negative stereotype, the deadbeat dad (before his wife left him he was having trouble finding work, and drinking heavily). They are portrayed very sensitively. But for me, this was totally undermined by the fact that the book didn't bother giving humanity to the vast mass of the English working-class (who are all fat, drunken, incomprehensible and greasy-faced). There are several asides which sound to me much more like a middle-class Englishwoman's reaction to modern Britain than that of a working-class Eastern European man. Most of the speech of the British characters is really tin-eared - which grates even more in comparison to, say, the well-written conversations between Christy and Lev. And it seemed to me there was a lot of lazy stereotyping going on. You can see that from the fact that Christy's ex-wife is now shacked up with an estate agent - easily one of the top five most hated professions in Britain. Oh well, then, we just know we can hate him. Wouldn't it have been more subtle if we could have had sympathy for Christy's wife as well? If she had been someone who left him because she couldn't stand the fact that he kept coming home incoherent and throwing up on the hall carpet, but ended up with someone who loved her and was able to care for her and her child? I don't think that would necessarily have made Christy's character any less sympathetic.

I know a lot of people have rated this book very highly, and I really, really, really did try. I kept picking it up for another go, but inevitably, after a really moving piece, I would come to something which made me roll my eyes and grind my teeth, and, y'know, that's not really what I look for in my reading. So, onto the 'abandoned' pile it goes. show less

This novel is a remedy. If you have been reading too many fast-moving, cliff-hanging, emotionally-wringing new novels which don’t give you time to breathe, now sink into this. ‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain is a sensitive portrayal of the friendship of two boys who meet at kindergarten and form a lifelong on-off friendship. Gustav and Anton are the products of their parents and upbringing, and the baggage they inherit. All of this is complicated by post-war Switzerland. The war show more seems, to them, irrelevant, but in fact it frames their whole lives.
Gustav lives with his widowed mother Emilie in a small town in Switzerland. Money is tight and Emilie juggles jobs to manage. As a lonely toddler who misses a father he barely remembers, Gustav longs for more warmth from an emotionally-distant mother. She encourages him to ‘master himself’, his behaviour, his emotions, his ambitions. He accompanies her to her cleaning job at the local church, he helps by cleaning rubbish from beneath the grating; instead of throwing it away, he keeps it carefully in a tin. The only person with whom he shares these treasures is Anton, his first real friend. Visiting Anton’s home and meeting his parents, Gustav comes to realize that his own lifestyle is not the norm and that other people live and love in different ways. He starts to question his mother, her distance, her lack of love, and why she will not talk about Gustav’s father, Erich. Anton, Gustav soon understands, is emotionally vulnerable and unable to master himself. This makes him feel protective of his friend, especially when it becomes clear to Gustav that his mother dislikes Anton. The reasons why are hinted at but not understood until the story of Erich is told.
This is a slow-paced novel about friendship, love, and how and where these connect and disconnect. It is about the expectations of relationships and how these can run afoul when any hopes and ambitions are hidden. And it is about conscience: when to do the right thing; what is the right thing; when to remain silent and when to speak out. Decisions taken based on conscience can haunt an individual all their life and affect everyone around them forever. The conflicts faced by the two boys and their parents reflect the moral dilemmas faced by Switzerland during World War Two and afterwards, long after the two boys have become men.
The story is told in three parts. Gustav’s childhood to the age of five. The story of Emilie and Erich’s romance and early married life. And finally Gustav and Anton as men in their fifties. Facts are slowly revealed which explain Emile’s coldness, and Erich’s failure as a police officer. But some things remain a secret until Gustav himself is nearing retirement and his mother is no longer there to question. Anton’s hoped-for high-flown career as a concert pianist morphs into the underwhelming one of music teacher in his hometown. Gustav opens a hotel and concentrates on creating comfort for his guests. A comfort he never felt in his own home: warmth, soft beds, roaring fires, exquisite food. Both men are products of their childhood but lack the self-awareness to change things mid-life. At the heart of it all is Mitteland, their ordinary hometown.
Mitteland in itself is an indication of how Tremain spins a compelling story out of everyday ingredients. There is nothing glamorous about ‘The Gustav Sonata’. There is depression, privation and jealousy. But there is also love and hope. The scenes in Davos when the two boys play make-believe, running a sanatorium for imaginary sufferers of TB, are delicate and touching. Rose Tremain is an author whose books vary considerably from each other. The breadth of her understanding of human nature, and the diversity of history and settings she writes about, is humbling. She is never a boring author.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ show less