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The Secret River by Kate GrenvilleWinner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Orange PrizeShortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, the new novel by the author of The Idea of Perfection is about the early settlement of Australia from 1806 to the 1820's.
Plot OutlineWilliam Thornhill is a boatman on the River Thames in 1806 at the opening of The Secret River. William is married to his childhood sweetheart, Sal, but life is tough for them after her father dies, for all that William is a freeman, with a boat of his own. Their first year of marriage is idyllic, crowned by the birth of a lusty, bawling son, also called William. But "In the year of the boy's second birthday, winter came early and sharp." the winters of the early 19th century were far fiercer than modern ones, houses were nowhere near as well insulated, and healthcare primitive. "in that month of the freeze, with no money coming, Thornhill's world cracked and broke." First, Mrs Middleton, Sal's mother, falls ill. When she dies, Middleton is broken, and falls ill soon after. Money for the doctors, the landlord and the funeral haemorrage from William's business, and still there is no money coming in. From there it is a downward spiral, with Middleton working for other men who pay him insufficiently to live; he takes to theft, is caught, and sentenced to be hung. His only hope is to write letters to influential men begging for mercy, and hoping that they will grant him clemency. William's clemency is to be transported to Australia with the rest of his family. From there, he falls in love with the vast, seemingly empty land, including a bluff overlooking an inaccessible river, the river of the title. Of course, Australia is not empty; it has been settled tens of thousands of years before. But the black-skinned men who can vanish into the bush at a moment's notice, who have an oral history and a culture of their own, are not recognized as the land's owners. To the early settlers they are savages to be chased off, and whose very alien-ness makes them to be feared. Grenville's Previous NovelsThe author several other novels, including Bearded Ladies and The Idea of Perfection, as well as non-fiction works such as Writing from Start to Finish: a Six-Step Guide, Kate Grenville does not sugar-coat the early settler's savage racism in any way, nor does she soften the behaviour of the native people -- settlers were killed, as well as aborigines -- but she does offer a fascinating insight into brutal men who were terrified of the strange, vast land that they had ended up in, and who responded to that fear with ever-increasing ruthlessness. Prizes and NominationsThe Secret River was rightfully nominated for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, and won both the Orange Prize, and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, and is a powerful and thought-provoking novel.
The copyright of the article The Secret River by Kate Grenville in Modern British Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Secret River by Kate Grenville in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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