If I'm honest the enduring feeling I have after reading this book is one of anger. Not because it isn't a good book! Goodness me, no. But anger at what was done to the Aboriginal people of Australia. And yet the book is a story of one man overcoming the, odds and fulfilling in part, his dream.
The protagonist, William Thornhill, is a convict sent to New South Wales. The character is inspired by one of Kate Grenville's own ancestors. In making the best of his situation Thornhill becomes enamoured of a piece of land that he wishes to have for his own. To the settlers and convicts it seemed that all you needed to do was claim it for yourself and, hey presto, you're a landowner. But the taking of the land is really tantamount to theft - theft from the indigenous people who have tended it for generation after generation.
It's a novel breathtaking in its descriptive beauty of the antipodean landscape yet graphic in its treatment of the brutality afforded the Darug people. It's an uncompromising tale with an undercurrent that suggests impending doom all the way through.
What Kate Grenville does so cleverly with the character of Thornhill is make us believe that his humanity might win through and that he is not as base as some of his vile compatriots. So the reader doesn't necessarily dislike him for that hope remains.
His wife, Sal, was one of my favourite characters, loyal to her husband yet surely in an undesirable. situation not of her own making. I suppose that anyone in such circumstances will strive to do the best they can. Here making a living from the land was almost the only option but there was no sense of the settlers working in tandem with people already working that land. Instead they foisted their own ways without consideration. Sal seems to be one of the few who might just make an effort to co exist.
Broadly the novel exposes the clash of cultures and the disastrous outcomes that can cause. It's solid prose that is slow in places but conjures expertly the tenor of the times. The research is impeccable and there is no faltering for the reader of the sense that you are there in nineteenth century Australia.
My thanks to Canongate books for a gifted copy.
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