November 2011: Kate Grenville

Details about books and so on later today - just starting the topic

Kate Grenville

So what are you reading?

I have chosen to read Lilian's Story by Kate Grenville which I hope to follow by Dark Places. She is a new to me author whom I am hoping to love.

I read Sarah Thornhill in September and really enjoyed it. It's the 3rd of Grenville's books that I've liked - The Idea of Perfection and The Secret River were slightly better, I think. I've posted my comments below from my 75 Challenge thread. (I hope it's ok to post this here - I know I didn't read it this month.)

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I finished Sarah Thornhill and have given it 3 1/2 stars. It's the sequel to Kate Grenville's excellent The Secret River, but I don't think it matters if you read this one first. I had totally forgotten what happened in The Secret River, which is pertty dopy because at the time I loved it and immediately added Kate Grenville to my favourite authors list on here. Not remembering did not detract from the book at all, and if anything made it slightly better because there was clearly a Dark Secret From The Past.

Sarah Thornhill is the youngest of 5 children in the Thornhill family. Her father, William, and her mother Meg were English convicts who were sent to Australia. William is now well-off, remarried to a very unlikable woman, and doing a pretty good job at being upright and respectable. Sarah talks about the "taint" of being an ex-convict though, which is still there. Grenville does a great job again at making you feel like you are back in Australia 200 years ago, up the Hawkesbury River. Sarah grows up and falls in love with Jack Langland, from one of the other farming families in their community. Jack's mother was an Aborigine woman but he's been brought up in the Langland family as one of them, but only up to a point. Jack's best friend is Will, Sarah's oldest brother, and they work on the sealing boats that go to New Zealand. There's a strong New Zealand strand to the story (but I don't want to give away the plot).

As you'd expect in a book set in early Australia the main themes are race and class and the different attitudes of the immigrants to the Aborigines. Mostly though this reads like a straightforward good story of Sarah and how she falls in love with a boy who's not good enough for her parents. I really enjoyed it, but it didn't blow me away like the Secret River did at the time.

I've previously read The Idea of Perfection and The Secret River. Now I'm reading The Lieutenant. What I like about Grenville is the relative simplicity of her prose. Her writing just seems effortless.

Not loving Lilian's Story so much.

Just finished The secret river and really enjoyed it.

This was my first monthly author read. I tried Lilian's Story, but gave up halfway as I found the story bland and the characters uninteresting.

Better luck next month!

HannahJo, I tried Lillian's Story and had to give up on it as well. Perhaps at some point in the future I will be able to get through it. But I went to the library and on inter-library loan found Joan Makes History and I loved it!~! Read it in about 4 hours. I found it to be witty, wry, fascinating, very well written and I was drawn into each and every segment of the book, plus it was not at all as I expected it to be. I really enjoyed this one by Kate Grenville.
I am looking forward to reading Rumer Godden. I only have one of her's and I have already read it so I ordered An Episode of Sparrows. It sounded really good. I was looking for In This House of Brede but couldn't find it on BookMooch or PBS. I will just have to get that one later. Have wanted to read it for eons but "Sparrows" sounds good.

A bit short on time - but I have The Secret River on hand, as well as Searching for the Secret River. Rumer Godden was a favorite of my Mum's, so I'm familiar with her work, and love her. Her children's book were a staple in my childhood. It is a good time to read In This House of Brede again as it has a few years, and I will get a hold of copies of Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, and Two Under the Indian Sun. M.

I didn't expect to be reading a second Kate Grenville novel this month but I've just finished Sarah Thornhill, the sequel to The Secret River. Very readable, a page-turner even. A tale simply told and I loved it.

So The Lieutenant is not the sequel to The Secret River as it shows on the book page?

Checking out her Internet site, it seems that Sarah Thornhill is the third in the sequence.

I've just updated the series. Question: here it is listed as Early Australia Trilogy. I have left that, but on her site it is called “Colonial Trilogy”. Should we change it here?

I'd say yes and then leave a message on why on the new series page (link to the author site or something).

OK. Done. And messages left in both series descriptions. I didn't use a link, as I found the website through the link on the author page. (And I wouldn't have done this if there had been lots of books, but three isn't a problem.)

Late to the party (how embarrassing, I think Kate Grenville was my nomination!), but I'm currently reading The Secret River, with the Thornhill family just arriving in Sydney. The early part set in London was fascinating, and moving. (Poverty sucks.)

I was going to buy a copy, then thought I'd better borrow a copy from Mum, then we both kept on forgetting, and I finally picked up a library copy. One of those disorganised sorts of months, which kept me from participating here as much as I'd like. (I shall hopefully make a comment when I'm finished, however!)

Hopefully I'll do better with Rumer Godden. :)

I opted to read Joan Makes History. I liked it very much but can't say I loved it. I need to become better acquainted with her work and with Australian writers in general.

"So many lives! Being explorers or prisoners of the Crown, hairdressers or tree-choppers, washerwomen or judges, ladies of leisure or bareback riders, photographers or mothers or mayoresses.
I, Joan, have been all these things. I am known to my unimaginative friends simply as Joan, born when this century was new, and now a wife, a mother, and a grandmother: Joan who has cooked dinners, washed socks, and swept floors while history happened elsewhere. What my friends do not know is that I am also every woman who has ever drawn breath: there has been a Joan cooking, washing, and sweeping through every event of history, although she has not been mentioned in the books until now."
Joan Makes History is a book full of snippits of cross sections of life. Many, many different times, places & lifestyles are described wherein 'Joan' lives, works, loves, ........... makeing a difference or not. It is rather a confusing book at the beginning until you figure out just what is going on and then it becomes a living, breathing thing in your hands. The book is not wonderful but it is very good and I had to get into Kate Grenville's rhythm of writing as I do with so many Australian writers.
There were times in the stories where Joan wanted to simply cry out: 'You fools, do you not see I am Joan, making history?' She ends her book with this: 'Long after I am dirt, there will still be such people screeching, singing and sneezing away, and I will always be part of them. Stars blazed, protozoa coupled, apes levered themselves upright, generations of women and men lived and died, and like them all I, Joan, have made history.'

I gave this book 3 1/2 stars.

#16> Yes! Lots of great Australian authors for you to read. :)

I finished The Secret River last night, and it was brilliant. A 5-star read. Review will be forthcoming, just don't hold your breath.

>17 wookiebender:

If we do not see it by Easter, someone will remind you :)

#18> LOL!

#11 The Lieutenant was the book that came after The Secret River and is set around the same period, even slightly earlier?
Sarah Thornhill, published in 2011, is the sequel.