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The Secret River
The Secret River
The Secret River
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The Secret River

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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This Man Booker Award Finalist and Commonwealth Prize-winner is an “unforgettable” tale of crime and survival in colonial Australia (Chicago Tribune).
 
In 1806 William Thornhill, an illiterate English bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep compassion, steals a load of wood and, as a part of his lenient sentence, is deported, along with his beloved wife, Sal, to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. The Secret River is the tale of William and Sal’s deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William’s gradual realization that if he wants to make a home for his family, he must forcibly take the land from the people who came before him.
 
Acclaimed around the world, The Secret River is a “magnificent” work of historical fiction that “pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another’s doom” (The New Yorker).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 1, 2007
ISBN9780802197795
The Secret River
Author

Kate Grenville

KATE GRENVILLE was born in Sydney, Australia. Her bestselling novel The Secret River has won numerous international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. It was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain’s most valuable literary award. Grenville is also the author of several other novels and three books on the craft of writing. She lives in Sydney with her family. Visit her online at kategrenville.com.

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Rating: 3.805418742364532 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Secret River by Kate Grenville Down Under A Review by Ron Charles The most remarkable quality of Kate Grenville's new novel is the way it conveys the enormous tragedy of Australia's founding through the moral compromises of a single ordinary man. The Secret River reminds us that national history may be recorded as a succession of larger-than-life leaders and battles, but in fact a country arises from the accretion of personal dreams, private sacrifices and, often, hidden acts of cruelty. The special power of this novel took me off guard because several years ago Grenville wrote one of my favorite romantic comedies, The Idea of Perfection, which won the Orange Prize. Now she's earned the Commonwealth Prize for The Secret River, and though it betrays none of her comic zest, that's just a testament to her range. In this tragic story of colonization, everyone suffers. The aborigines, of course, are decimated. But what's harder to show is the strangling of conscience in those who triumph. That aspect allows The Secret River to speak to our country as clearly and profoundly as it speaks to hers.The novel opens in late 18th-century London. Young William Thornhill has a cruel sense of how common he is in the vast machinery of the city that chews up his parents and leaves him an orphan. But he's exceptionally strong and determined; he gets an apprenticeship as a waterman (rowing a kind of river-taxi), falls in love with a good woman and begins to imagine that his life won't be a wretched struggle after all.Grenville knows just how to build this meager prosperity so that we can't help but swell with hope for William's future even as threats mount. Through a series of small, frighteningly plausible misfortunes, William and his wife, Sal, lose everything and turn to theft to survive. Soon after that, just as inevitably, William is arrested and sentenced to death. But Sal, unwilling to accept early widowhood, works the legal system as best she can and gets William and his family exiled to the penal colony of New South Wales.This lengthy introduction -- besides being harrowing and tremendously entertaining -- sets the foundation for the main story about the early settlement of the land Down Under by Britain's criminal refuse. When the Thornhills are finally dumped in Sydney, after a nine-month voyage in dark, separate quarters, they have nothing to call their own. But once again, their industrious natures pay off, and they slowly begin to attain some stability, so much so that William lays claim to 100 acres up the river. Sal agrees to give it a try for five years, but she marks the weeks off one by one on the trunk of a tree, a typically insightful detail about the way conflicting aspirations can develop between a loving husband and wife, "a space of silence" that comes between them "like a body of water."The problem, of course, is that this is not empty land. There are aborigines living here, even if their way of life makes it difficult for William to understand their sense of belonging. Most of his white neighbors are ignorant, violent men who treat the aborigines as sex slaves or vermin, but William is too decent and too afraid to strike out at them in the recommended ways. Still, after so many years at the bottom of the social scale, he's quickly intoxicated by the idea of being superior.One of the most haunting aspects of this novel is Grenville's portrayal of the aborigines, who appear here as William sees them: alien and intimidating. They move too quietly, too smoothly. They're naked with no sense of self-consciousness. They fade in and out of the forest unseen, and yet they don't seem to notice him unless they want to. In the most unnerving moment, William realizes that these apparently primitive people live in a state of leisure that he's never felt -- despite his constant labor. "They were like gentry," he thinks. "They spent a little time each day on their business, but the rest was their own to enjoy. The difference was that in their universe there was no call for another class of folk who stood waiting up to their thighs in river-water for them to finish their chat so they could be taken to their play or their ladyfriend. In the world of these naked savages, it seemed everyone was gentry."Every new progression of William's prosperity brings him closer to open conflict with these people. As the tension builds, he and his wife realize that their "hut had become a compressed cube of fear." All around them swirl stories of atrocities committed by the aborigines and the settlers. William and Sal pretend they can ignore these troubles, but in a devastating finale, William must finally choose between his long cherished dream of success and his sense of himself as a decent human being. Grenville's powerful telling of this story is so moving, so exciting, that you're barely aware of how heavy and profound its meaning is until you reach the end in a moment of stunned sadness. I had a difficult time getting into this book, but once I did it was fascinating. I loved the relationship between husband and wife, and was in awe of how people can live on virtually nothing. William Thornhill is an admirable character. He has no education and almost no hope throughout his life, yet he knows right from wrong and is conscious of others. I hoped he would choose not to participate in the masacre of the aboriginies, but he chose to fight for his love of the land, he was going to chose that over his wife even. Although the choice led to success and prosperity for him and the others, he struggled with that decision throughout his life, that reflection makes the story more true and valuable. I found it hard to read the violent scence and had to skip over many passages, but overall I really enjoyed this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5

    Great book. A fast read but one that's likely to stick with me for a long time. The story is about William Thornhill, born in London in 1777, and transported to New South Wales as a convict in the early nineteenth century; and in a wider sense also about the awful treatment of the aboriginal people of Australia by the settlers.

    Very well written; quite weighty but also easy to read. I'll be on the lookout for Grenville's other books.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a rather solemn, calmly paced novel about the early interactions between convicts and Aboriginal Australians in the 19th century. It was a fascinating insight into those times, and the author was impressively even-handed, in the sense that the white settlers are shown to be victims of the situation too, rather than being cast immediately as the villains, a role which more rightly belongs to colonialism itself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a powerful historical novel about a British felon and his family beginning a new life in the penal colony of New South Wales, Australia. Kate Grenville's words paint a vivid picture of the new landscape and people, including the Aborigines. The clash between the white settlers and the Aborigines leads to horrific violence. The Secret River delivers an enormous emotional punch. This is one I'll remember for a long time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What an amazing novel this is! I was completely absorbed from cover to cover. I've never been much into Kate Grenville, however I read this as part of the Year 12 English course. Although it never made it on the list of novels for students to read - I loved this book! I loved it for its raw honesty about our aboriginal history and the way in which is highlighted the mind set of White Australia during our nation's colonisation. Such an important message and a novel that all should read! I struggled at times to read the pages - a mixture of tears as well as anger... mixed sometimes with a feeling of distress and contempt. A tale beatifully told and laced with characters you grow to love and despise...Love, love, loved it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What an insight about Australia's early settlers and their interaction with indigenous Australians! This book is a family story spanning from London to Sydney to the Hawkesbury. It is based around seldomly discussed historical events, and provides an amazing insight into conflicting human feelings stemming from individual's personal background, that ultimately result in the various approaches taken by early settlers in their interaction with Aborigines. A great book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Secret River, by Kate Grenville, tells the story of a convict from London who is transported to Australia in the early 1800s and sets out to create a new life for himself and his family. In doing so, he must contend with the natives who were already living on the land.

    I found the beginning and end of the book most engaging, while the middle somewhat lost my interest. The stories of settlers in "new" (to them) lands are not ones that especially grab me. I read this book because it sounded like it would go beyond the simple settler story to address something more universal. In some ways, it did. I think Grenville did a good job of making the main character sympathetic, despite the atrocious ways he behaves near the end of the book. The ending was especially good here, because it showed that despite getting what he wanted, life was not all roses in the end.

    It is likely that her portrayal of the white settlers' behavior in Australian is fairly accurate, but it still bothered me greatly to read about how cruel people were towards the natives. The book did a decent job of showing the mindset of some of these people and what could propel them towards certain behavior, but it only went so far and still left me wondering in the end how people could act with such cruelty. Furthermore, this book tells a story strictly from the whites' perspectives. We do not see what the natives think or feel about things other than through the whites' interpretation of their behavior.

    In the end, I think The Secret River is well-written, but I was disappointed that it did not pull me in as much as I was hoping. I believe there is a sequel, and I am not sure whether I will read it or not.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Secret River is an excellent book with well-drawn characters. It tells the story of William Thornhill, a British man sent to Australia in the early 1800s for theft. As he and his family build a life in this new land, he begins to see that it might be possible for him to achieve more materially than he ever dreamed possible - but he might have to do horrific things to achieve them. The book has great descriptions of the characters, the land, and the family life William and his wife share with their children.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    William Thornhill is born into poverty and the slums of London in the 1880's. In many ways, a good person at heart, William is also a complex character. "He grew up a fighter. By the time he was ten years old the other boys knew to leave him alone. The rage warmed him and filled him up. It was a kind of friend." p. 15Shortly after marrying his beloved wife, Sal, he is sentenced to death for stealing wood. However , his sentence is commuted to transportation to Australia " for the term of his natural life"His wife and growing family accompany him to the "sad scrabbling" p75 town of Sydney in 1806. There he labours for " His Majesty's Government " as England colonizes Australia.As time goes by, William a loving husband and father, wishes for more dignity and patch of land to call his own. Very much against his wife's wishes, William moves his family to a very isolated piece of bush on the side of Hawkesbury River, a spot with which he has become smitten.While the young family tries to eke out a plot of land, slowly they realize that in fact this land is already occupied by aboriginal people. Internally frightened and not really understanding the aboriginal people and their culture , William acts aggressively and angrily with these people. This is a powerful story, and the climax, in which many white men confront the aboriginal people, evoked anger, sorrow and even rage within me. I felt ashamed to to a part of the white race that has so often attempted to colonize other countries by our own villainous treatment of indigenous people. The Secret River shines a powerful and unflinching light on the clash between the forces of greed and entitlement felt by many colonizers versus the aboriginal people.Very graphic, grim, unsettling and powerful , The Secret River will stay with me for a long, long time.4. 5 stars
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a very good story about William and Sal Thornhill. William is a convict sent to Australia, where he is released into his wife's custody. William tries to make a life for himself in this new land, aspiring to being a landowner. Along the way, he makes moral choices that affect his family and his own sense of himself. William is a deeply flawed character, very real. Kate Grenville has done an amazing job of telling his story in an even-handed manner. Was William at fault, or were his choices virtually inevitable because of the society he lived in?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book belongs to the best sort of historical fiction--where the author never loses sight of her story as she attempts to create an accurate historical setting and social conditions. The story isn't always comfortable. The characters aren't always likable. But the narrative keeps moving.For anyone who lives in a country that had colonies, and for anyone who lives in a country that used to be a colony--where settlers invaded land with no regard for the rights of the native population--I would call this book necessary reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a tough read. Inspired by the author's family history of ancestors transported to Australia as felons, it follows a working class family whose trials at the hands of an unfair society lead to theft and the threat of execution. Will Thornhill's death sentence is commuted to one of transportation for life, and so he begins a new existence on the other side of the world. The hardest part of this novel is the brutality shown by the white immigrants to the indigenous people whose land they squat on and claim as their own. I couldn't find any warmth in any of the characters who are at the centre of the story. Having said that, it's incredibly well written and thought provoking. You don't have to sympathise with the protagonists of every book, after all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The high quality of writing is obvious from the start. An unflinching, realistic slice of Australian history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I appreciated this story. It took me on a journey to New South Wales in the early 1800s. There were many vibrant scenes and some that were not so pleasant, but overall, it was a learning experience. I'm not sure that I want to read more like this.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I should note first of all that this is not strictly crime fiction although it is based on Australia's convict (criminal) past and the main characters are felons, and murder does occur.What it does do for the reader is give a pretty authentic portrayal of early 19th century New South Wales, a harsh penal colony. It gives a snapshot, in a "no holds barred" sort of way, of a convict, ticket of leave, family who pioneer life on the Hawkesbury River and eventually begin to call New South Wales home.I say it is authentic because it has all the features of research well done and resonates with what I know of colonial history, but also tells me a little more.It highlights 19th century beliefs about the aboriginal population whom the authorities did not regard as owning the land because they didn't farm the soil. It illustrates the resultant conflict between the aborigines and the convict/emancipist settlers on what was then the frontier of the colony.The reading experience is made all the more enjoyable by the excellent narration skills of Bill Wallis.So why did I read it?I read almost exclusively crime fiction and decided that this year I would challenge myself to read outside the genre occasionally.This is the first one I'm managed.THE SECRET RIVER is the first of a trilogy set in early Australia.It won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature; the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (the NSW Premier's Prize); the Community Relations Commission Prize; the Booksellers' Choice Award; the Fellowship of Australian Writers Prize and the Publishing Industry Book of the Year Award.It was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin prize.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Interesting characters, beautiful writing - this was a fantastic novel. Fascinating historical setting, and a time and place I knew very little about. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It IS a patch on "Tree of Man"! The cover blurbs compares Kate Grenville with the great Australian novelist Patrick White. There are some echos of Stan Parker making his mark in the bush in 'Tree of Man' with Will Thornhill's settlement on the Hawkesbury a century earlier. Unquestionably White's novel is far better in every respect but Kate Grenville makes a good stab at it. Her novel can't be dismissed as a mere imitator. They are different stories of course but both have the inner monologue of a quiet, moral and industrious man trying to make a home for a family in a wilderness and yet with extremely limited intellectual resources. For just the comparison between to two novels, 'The Secret River' is worth a read.Grenville follows Will from his early 19th Century childhood in the poverty stricken slums of London and his romance and hope with Sal and her father's row boats (wherries) rowing cargo and passengers across the Thames. Things get worse. Will is convicted to hang but gets a reprieve to transportation to New South Wales. In the colony of Sydney Will and Sal make a go of it and Will takes an opportunity to have a piece of land on the Hawkesbury which brings Will and his family, along with other ex convicts, to confront the Aborigines whose land the Hawkesbury is. The denouement happens, the whites have no capacity to understand the black people nor the rhythms. The whites are from the bottom of a impoverished social order hanging on to an imagined notion that as whites they are civilised and the blacks are savages. Then the slaughter happens with ugly and unnecessary vengeance and an epilogue has Will years later a rich man in his stone house overlooking the river.The novel has some difficult problems. The story of Will, from inside his head, is not fully convincing. This has to do with it not being a man who is writing. The quality of prose is good, the plot is valid. It is just that, as a man, I do not experience Will as a fellow man. I wondered why Grenville chose to inhabit Will's consciousness and not that of his wife Sal who is a great character. She is with Will the whole way and this story could be told by the woman.Another difficulty is that book is almost halfway over before Will and family arrive at the river so there isn't enough time for the writer to explore the interface between the blacks and the whites and as a reader I had to bring to this story a lot more information about Australian Aboriginal kinship and relationship to country in order to appreciate the gulf of misunderstanding between the emancipated convicts and the natives.A third problem is that once the slaughter happens the book just ends; apart from the epilogue of Will's glory as a 'gentleman' of New South Wales. He is estranged from his young son who as a child when they first arrived in Sydney, did get to play with the native children and gained a knowledge without prejudice of the native's dignity and expectation of the whites with whom the seems ready to share the place. An epilogue from the son's point of view would have given breadth and depth to the story.I'd give this book 3 and a half stars if there was that option.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    William Thornhill grew up poor in the slums of London, but his luck seemed to changed when he obtained an apprenticeship as a Waterman on the Thames and later married his master's daughter, Sal Middleton. Life again turned hard when Sal's parents died along with all financial security. When William Thornhill was caught illegally supplementing his meagre income he was transported to Australia. Fortunately he was able to be accompanied by his wife and young son.Life in the colony in 1806 was very harsh, but with a dream of building a life on land in the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury River, the Thornhill family battled severe conditions and the threat of aboriginal attack, to forge their new life.Well written and entertaining. A honest telling of a difficult time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    William Thornhill a bargeman on the Thames is transported to Sydney with his young family. Despair is replaced by a slim hope for the future. A rather depressing look at human nature. We have the completely awful characters and those who, in order to hang onto their slim hope for the future compromise what they know is right. It's probably an entirely realistic look at human nature even if I would want it to be wrong. An enjoyable read, I'd be interested in reading more historical fiction set in this time period.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deservedly award winning story of early colonial times on the Hawkesbury River. Tells the life of a London waterman, transported to Australia for theft, his ambitions for a better life in Australia and of the fatal consequences for the aboriginal inhabitants. Beautifully and sympathetically written, evokes both the grime of eighteeth century London and the fresh beauty of New South Wales as seen for the first time... I have recently taken a ferry ride on the Hawkesbury river and read this book as a consequence. Deals with the same themes but much much better than the dreadful "English Passengers"!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Grenville researched her own family history to tell this thoroughly engrossing tale of one of the first white settlers--a prisoner who sentence was commuted to "Australia" as he and his wife attempt to set up a homestead far away from white settlements. Their negotiations, for better and worse, with the aboriginals were all new to this reader,
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Kate Grenville's novel The secret river is a dramatic story not often told, and a multiple-layered novel. The story begins with the life of the Thornhills, William and Sal, in utter poverty in London. When William is caught stealing his death sentence is changed to deportation of his whole family to New South Wales. After a few years in the colony, like many (ex-) convicts, Thornhill thrives, establishing a life of comfort unbeknownst to people like him in London. While Sal wants to set money aside to return to England, with the risk of losing everything again and falling back into a life of poverty, William Thornhill wants to stay and stake a claim to a piece of land of his fancy. For years he observes the plot and when he finally wants to stake his claim it appears to be taken. But William ignores the signs, as apparently the digging does not indicate a claim of fellow settlers, but merely the work of some local aborigines, who do not seem to linger.From this stage, the novel's plot becomes a metaphor for the colonization of Australia, for the land on which seemingly no-one lingers does actually belong to the native inhabitants. The story of the Thornhill family then develops to its ultimate, very dramatic climax.The secret river is beautifully written, exploring an intriguing theme and portraying both the colonists and the aborigines in a psychologically completely convincing way. It is a strong story of real interest, not only as a historical novel, but also in its implications to the present.Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although the ending was a bit of a disappointment, I really enjoyed this.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Slow start - better at end
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    William Thornhill breaks the law so he and family are transported to New South Wales [today's Australia]. The novel deals with what whites are sent there and their uneasy relationship with the natives. William claims a bit of land and he and family try to make a go of it. After a period of years he finds that Australia has changed him. His wife still speaks wistfully of Home -- England -- but to him it is becoming a distant memory. For a long part the novel dragged and it was a chore to force myself to read on. I'm glad I finally read of William's transformation and love of this new land. The description of the massacre was powerful. The novel WAS beautifully written."He remembered how it had been, that first night, the fearsome strangeness of the place.....He tried to picture himself the picture he had so often thought of, the neat little house in Covent Garden, himself lf strolling out of a morning to make sure his apprentices were sweating for him and that no man was stealing from him. But he could not really remember what the air had been like, or the touch of English rain....The picture he and Sal had carried around with them and handed backwards and forwards to each other was clear enough, but it had nothing to do with him.He was no longer the same person who thought that a little house in Swan Lane and a wherry all his own was all a man might desire. Eating the food of this country, drinking its water, breathing its air, had remade him, particle by particle."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    William Thornhill became a thief just to survive and eat in London. When he finally gets caught, he is sentenced to death, but gets a reprieve and instead is sent to New South Wales where he is bound over to his wife. At the end of that period, he is emancipated and begins to build his own legacy. The reader is treated to the landscape and hardships of that period of Australian history. There is also the issue of the white man versus the black aboriginals of the area. While modern readers will probably empathize with the plight of the aboriginals, the author does treat it with authenticity for that period. Her central character shows more compassion than many of the other settlers toward them. I enjoyed this venture into early 19th century Australia in fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Angus and Robertson Top 100 (2006 - 2008) Book #93.The Secret River is a historically set novel. The plot was interesting, however, not a lot really happened in the book. It wasn't difficult to read, but it is not a book that I would race to read again.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Grenville's depiction of daily life in London and unsettled South Wales is impressive, detailed, and filled with a clear appreciation for both nature and history. In fact, once the story moved to South Wales, I sometimes felt I was reading a piece of nature writing more so than a novel. This, essentially, ends up being the problem with the text. While the story is certainly realistic and detailed, the characters are mere silhouettes from history for the vast majority of the novel. Absolutely, they are believable, but they are also simply drawn, and incredibly flat considering the scope of the novel.At the climax of the work, well into the novel, the characters come more into focus, Grenville's writing of plot and action excelling as she writes what is, fairly clearly, at the heart of the book (and perhaps the reason for the book in its entirety?). Afterward, however, the characters move back to the background, their story only important as it stands as a frontal lens for history.Readers who want the history more than a great read will, most certainly, appreciate the book, and it certainly does give a view to a little enough discussed piece of history. That said, as a novel and as a story to explore for story and character...it's not something I'd recommend, lovely as the writing may be.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There was nothing in this book to make it stand out from all the other stories of a man (sometimes with a wife or a wife and children) who is forced out of his current situation and heads to the wilderness to start a new life. He has to kill a lot of people along the way but makes a success of himself, becomes wealthy and yet has some dissatisfaction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little bit of a different read for me, is it possible I've never read anything Australian before?! Feels like this is the first time. Story of William Thornhill and his struggle to survive in early 19th century London culminating in being exiled to Australia as a convict. I know so little about this area of history and found it both shocking and interesting. The brutality towards the native population seems unbelievable today yet is so perfectly played out in this story that you almost feel sorry for William the making of his terrible decisions.

Book preview

The Secret River - Kate Grenville

Praise for The Secret River:

A riveting narrative unfolds into a chilling allegory of the mechanics and the psychology of colonialism in the veteran Australian author’s rich historical novel . . . . The story’s resolution achieves genuine tragic grandeur. Grenville’s best, and a giant leap forward.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Elegant . . . Graceful . . . Grenville is a fine, poetic writer who takes a lot of risks . . . . Moves on gusts of foreboding, not unlike a horror novel . . . Like a thriller . . . Powerful.

Newsday

"For the Australian pioneer of Kate Grenville’s hugely filmic The Secret River, a land of opportunity becomes a moral wilderness worthy of Conrad."

Vogue

Nothing save for genius can explain the quality of this book, the extraordinary— one might even say alchemical—transformation of historical details into story, language into poetry. Against every measure with which a book might be judged, this one transcends. This one deserves every prize it has already received, and every prize yet to come.

Chicago Tribune

Here is someone who can really write.

—Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang

Magnificent . . . an unflinching exploration of modern Australia’s origins . . . Grenville’s psychological acuity, and the sheer gorgeousness of her descriptions of the territory being fought over, pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another’s doom.

The New Yorker

Absorbing . . . Americans will find Grenville’s eloquent pioneer story—pitting natives against European settlers—at once foreign and stunningly familiar. A

—Entertainment Weekly

An eye-opening tale . . . Grenville earns her praise, presenting the settler-aboriginal conflict with equanimity and understanding. Grenville’s story illuminates a lesser-known part of history—at least to American readers—with sharp prose and a vivid frontier family.

—Publishers Weekly

A book everyone should read. It is evocative, gracefully written, terrible, and confronting.

Sunday Mail (Australia)

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

FICTION

Bearded Ladies

Lilian’s Story

Dreamhouse

Joan Makes History

Dark Places

The Idea of Perfection

NON-FICTION

The Writing Book

Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written (with Sue Woolfe)

Writing from Start to Finish

THE SECRET RIVER

KATE GRENVILLE

Copyright © 2005 by Kate Grenville

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to

Canongate, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Originally published in Australia in 2005 by

The Text Publishing Company

Grateful thanks to the Map Collection, State Library of Victoria, and the New South Wales Public Office for permission to use ‘An Outline Map of the Settlement in New South Wales, 1817’ by S. A. Perry.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-10: 1-84195-914-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-84195-914-6

Canongate

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

09 10 11 12   10 9 8 7 6 5 4

This novel is dedicated to the Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present and future.

Contents

Strangers

PART ONE

London

PART TWO

Sydney

PART THREE

A Clearing in the Forest

PART FOUR

A Hundred Acres

PART FIVE

Drawing a Line

PART SIX

The Secret River

Mr Thornhill’s Villa

Strangers

The Alexander, with its cargo of convicts, had bucked over the face of the ocean for the better part of a year. Now it had fetched up at the end of the earth. There was no lock on the door of the hut where William Thornhill, transported for the term of his natural life in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and six, was passing his first night in His Majesty’s penal colony of New South Wales. There was hardly a door, barely a wall: only a flap of bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of lock, of door, of wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water.

Thornhill’s wife was sleeping sweet and peaceful against him, her hand still entwined in his. The child and the baby were asleep too, curled up together. Only Thornhill could not bring himself to close his eyes on this foreign darkness. Through the doorway of the hut he could feel the night, huge and damp, flowing in and bringing with it the sounds of its own life: tickings and creakings, small private rustlings, and beyond that the soughing of the forest, mile after mile.

When he got up and stepped out through the doorway there was no cry, no guard: only the living night. The air moved around him, full of rich dank smells. Trees stood tall over him. A breeze shivered through the leaves, then died, and left only the vast fact of the forest.

He was nothing more than a flea on the side of some enormous quiet creature.

Down the hill the settlement was hidden by the darkness. A dog barked in a tired way and stopped. From the bay where the Alexander was anchored there was a sense of restless water shifting in its bed of land and swelling up against the shore.

Above him in the sky was a thin moon and a scatter of stars as meaningless as spilt rice. There was no Pole Star, a friend to guide him on the Thames, no Bear that he had known all his life: only this blaze, unreadable, indifferent.

All the many months in the Alexander, lying in the hammock which was all the territory he could claim in the world, listening to the sea slap against the side of the ship and trying to hear the voices of his own wife, his own children, in the noise from the women’s quarters, he had been comforted by telling over the bends of his own Thames. The Isle of Dogs, the deep eddying pool of Rotherhithe, the sudden twist of the sky as the river swung around the corner to Lambeth: they were all as intimate to him as breathing. Daniel Ellison grunted in his hammock beside him, fighting even in his sleep, the women were silent beyond their bulkhead, and still in the eye of his mind he rounded bend after bend of that river.

Now, standing in the great sighing lung of this other place and feeling the dirt chill under his feet, he knew that life was gone. He might as well have swung at the end of the rope they had measured for him. This was a place, like death, from which men did not return. It was a sharp stab like a splinter under a nail: the pain of loss. He would die here under these alien stars, his bones rot in this cold earth.

He had not cried, not for thirty years, not since he was a hungry child too young to know that crying did not fill your belly. But now his throat was thickening, a press of despair behind his eyes forcing warm tears down his cheeks.

There were things worse than dying: life had taught him that. Being here in New South Wales might be one of them.

It seemed at first to be the tears welling, the way the darkness moved in front of him. It took a moment to understand that the stirring was a human, as black as the air itself. His skin swallowed the light and made him not quite real, something only imagined. His eyes were set so deeply into the skull that they were invisible, each in its cave of bone. The rock of his face shaped itself around the big mouth, the imposing nose, the folds of his cheeks. Without surprise, as though he were dreaming, Thornhill saw the scars drawn on the man’s chest, each a neat line raised and twisted, living against the skin.

He took a step towards Thornhill so that the parched starlight from the sky fell on his shoulders. He wore his nakedness like a cloak. Upright in his hand, the spear was part of him, an extension of his arm.

Clothed as he was, Thornhill felt skinless as a maggot. The spear was tall and serious. To have evaded death at the end of the rope, only to go like this, his skin punctured and blood spilled beneath these chilly stars! And behind him, hardly hidden by that flap of bark, were those soft parcels of flesh: his wife and children.

Anger, that old familiar friend, came to his side. Damn your eyes be off, he shouted. Go to the devil! After so long as a felon, hunched under the threat of the lash, he felt himself expanding back into his full size. His voice was rough, full of power, his anger a solid warmth inside him.

He took a threatening step forward. Could make out chips of sharp stone in the end of the spear. It would not go through a man neat as a needle. It would rip its way in. Pulling it out would rip all over again. The thought fanned his rage. Be off! Empty though it was, he raised his hand against the man.

The mouth of the black man began to move itself around sounds. As he spoke he gestured with the spear so it came and went in the darkness. They were close enough to touch.

In the fluid rush of speech Thornhill suddenly heard words. Be off, the man was shouting. Be off! It was his own tone exactly.

This was a kind of madness, as if a dog were to bark in English.

Be off be off! He was close enough now that he could see the man’s eyes catching the light under their heavy brows, and the straight angry line of his mouth. His own words had all dried up, but he stood his ground.

He had died once, in a manner of speaking. He could die again. He had been stripped of everything already: he had only the dirt under his bare feet, his small grip on this unknown place. He had nothing but that, and those helpless sleeping humans in the hut behind him. He was not about to surrender them to any naked black man.

In the silence between them the breeze rattled through the leaves. He glanced back at where his wife and infants lay, and when he looked again the man was gone. The darkness in front of him whispered and shifted, but there was only the forest. It could hide a hundred black men with spears, a thousand, a whole continent full of men with spears and that grim line to their mouths.

He went quickly into the hut, stumbling against the doorway so that clods of daubed mud fell away from the wall. The hut offered no safety, just the idea of it, but he dragged the flap of bark into place. He stretched himself out on the dirt alongside his family, forcing himself to lie still. But every muscle was tensed, anticipating the shock in his neck or his belly, his hand going to the place, the cold moment of finding that unforgiving thing in his flesh.

PART ONE

London

In the rooms where William Thornhill grew up, in the last decades of the eighteenth century, no one could move an elbow without hitting the wall or the table or a sister or a brother. Light struggled in through small panes of cracked glass and the soot from the smoking fireplace veiled the walls.

Where they lived, down close to the river, the alleyways were no more than a stride across, and dimmed even on the brightest day by the buildings packed in hugger-mugger. On every side it was nothing but brick walls and chimneys, cobblestones and mouldering planks where old whitewash marked the grain. There were the terraces of low-browed houses hunched down on themselves, growing out of the very dirt they sat on, and after them the tanneries, the shambles, the glue factories, the makings, filling the air with their miasmas.

Down beyond the tanneries, turnips and beets struggled in damp sour fields, and between the fields, enclosed behind their hedges and walls, were the boggy places too wet to plant in, with rushes and reeds where stagnant water glinted.

The Thornhills all stole turnips from time to time, running the risk of the dogs getting them, or the farmer hurling stones. Big brother Matty bore a scar on his forehead where a stone had made a turnip less tasty.

The highest things were the steeples. There was nowhere to go in all these mean and twisted streets, even out in the marshy low ground, where some steeple or other did not watch. As soon as one of them was hidden by the elbow of a lane there was another staring down from behind the chimneys.

And under the steeple, the House of God. William Thornhill’s life had begun, as far as his own memory of it was concerned, with the grandest house that God had: Christ Church beside the river. The building was so big it made his eyes water. On the gateposts there were snarling stone lions that his mother lifted him up to look at, but they made him cry out in fear. The vertiginous lawn seemed to engulf him as he stood in its emptiness. The bushes stood guard in a line, and tiny insects of humans laboured up the vast steps of the entrance far away. He was dizzy, lost, hot with panic.

Inside the church he had never seen such a vault of ceiling and such light. God had so much space it could frighten a boy from Tanner’s Lane. Up at the front were complicated carvings: screens, benches, a great construction that towered over the people sitting in the pews. It was a void into which his being expanded without finding a boundary, all in the merciless light that blasted down from the huge windows and left everything cold, with no kindly shadows anywhere. It was a place with no charity in its grey stones for a boy with the seat out of his britches.

He could not understand any of it, knew only that God was as foreign as a fish.

From the time he knew his own name, William Thornhill, it seemed that the world was crowded with other William Thornhills. For a start, there was always the ghost of the first William Thornhill, the brother who had died when only a week old. A year and a half later, in 1777, a year with a bit of a ring to it, he himself had come into the world, and they gave him the same name. The first William Thornhill was a handful of dust in the ground, and he was warm flesh and blood, and yet the dead William Thornhill seemed the first, the true, and himself no more than a shadow

Over the river in Labour-in-Vain Court, there were some distant cousins, and more William Thornhills. There was Old Mr Thornhill, a shrivelled little head nodding on top of some dark clothes. Then there was his son, Young William, a man altogether hidden behind black beard. At St Mary Mounthaw there was a William Thornhill who was a big boy of twelve and pinched the latest William Thornhill whenever he got the chance.

Then when the wife of Uncle Matthew the sea captain had a new baby, it was William Thornhill too. They visited with the baby and said its name, and everyone turned to him, smiling, expecting him to smile too, and he tried. But his sharp sister Mary, the oldest, saw his face fall. Later she punched him on the arm. Your name is common as dirt, William Thornhill, she said, and the anger rose up in him. He punched her straight back and shouted, William Thornhills will fill up the whole world, and she had no comeback to that, smart and all as she was.

His sister Lizzie, too young to hem sheets but old enough to carry a baby on her hip, had the care of the little ones. As a six-year-old she carried baby William to keep him from the mud, so that the smell of Lizzie, the coarse texture of her unruly hair coming out from under the cap, was more motherly to him than his mother.

He was always hungry. That was a fact of life: the gnawing feeling in his belly, the flat taste in his mouth, the rage that there was never enough. When the food came it was a matter of cramming it into his mouth so his hands could reach for more. If he was quick enough, he could grab the bread his little brother James was lifting to his mouth, break a piece off and get it down his gullet. Once it was swallowed no one could get it back. But Matty was doing the same, ripping the bread out of William’s hand, his eyes gone small and hard like an animal’s.

And always cold. There was a kind of desperation to it, a fury to be warm. In the winter his feet were stones on the end of his legs. At night he and the others lay shivering on the mouldy straw, scratching at the fleas and the bedbugs, full of their blood, that nipped them through their rags.

He had eaten the bedbugs more than once.

There was one blanket for the two youngest Thornhills, and each other’s smelly bodies the best warmth. James was older by two years and got the best of the blanket, but William, though smaller, was canny. He forced himself not to sleep, waiting for James’s snores, so he could pull most of it over himself.

You were forever hungry, his mother told him when he asked about himself, but had to stop for her cough, an explosion that ripped through her body. It sometimes seemed as though her cough was the only strong thing left in her. Greedy little bugger you was, she whispered at last, and he went away ashamed, hearing his empty belly rumbling even then, and something in him going stony from the dislike in her voice.

Lizzie’s story was the same, but different. Greedy, she cried, my word you was, Will, and look at you now, great lumps of boys don’t come out of thin air.

Her voice did not say that being such a great lump of boy was a bad thing to be, and when she said, Hollow legs, we called you, she said it with a smile.

Lizzie was a good sister for a baby to have, good with a sugar rag, strong at carrying. But when William was not yet three, the mother grew big and fretful, and another baby replaced him as the youngest, the one that Lizzie carried around on her hip. William, already haunted by the dead William Thornhill he had replaced, was now haunted by this other brother, John. It seemed he would forever be squeezed tight before and after.

Below him was John, and on top of him were Lizzie and James, the biggest brother Matty, and Mary, oldest of them all, scary with her shouting voice always scolding. She sat with the mother, crowding in around the little window sewing the shrouds for Gilling’s. Then there was Robert, older than William but younger too. Poor Robert never had more than half his wits, and less than that of his hearing, after he had the fever when he was five and nearly died. William had heard his mother scream one day, Better if you had died and been done with it! It made him go cold inside, for poor Rob was a kindly boy, and when his face lit up at some little gift, he could not wish him dead.

Pa worked at the cotton mill, the makings, the tanneries, nowhere for very long. His cheeks were hollow with points of red on them as if he were angry, and he crept about half asleep, always weary. When he spoke or laughed, the words or the mirth became a long wet rattling cough. Victualler was how he had described himself at John’s baptism, but victualler meant nothing grander than a few gloomy men from Mr Choubert’s tannery, gathered together in one of the Thornhills’ two rooms, drinking ale out of dirty wooden tankards and eating pies the mother had made: too much pastry, not enough filling. When the tan-pits froze over in the winter there were no customers and the room was bleak, smelling of old ale in the floorboards and the cold chalkiness of ash in the fireplace.

Then it was lean times for the Thornhills. At five, William was old enough to go with Pa round the streets at dawn with a stick and a sack, gathering the pure for the morocco works. Pa carried the sack, young William was the one with the stick. Pa walked ahead, spotting the dark curl of a dog turd from his greater height. If none could be found, then there was nothing but brown water from the river as a belly-filler. But when Pa saw one, it was the boy’s job to push it into the sack with the stick, trying not to breathe in the stink. The worst was when the dogs chose the cobbles at Tyer’s Gate with the wide gaps between, so the stuff dropped into the gaps and he had to gouge at it with the stick, or even with his fingernails while Pa stood coughing and pointing.

A full sack of pure was worth ninepence at the morocco yard. He had never asked what they used it for, only felt he would rather die than go on scraping the stuff off the cobbles of Southwark.

Except that the ache in his belly was even worse than the stink of the shit.

Ma was willing to risk less smelly ways to buy a loaf of bread. They watched her one day from behind a cart, William and Lizzie and James. Thornhill thought she looked obvious, lurking and slinking and tight-faced. Hold your head up, Ma, he wanted to call. And smile!

They saw her approach the trestle of books. The bookseller was inside her shop and it was hard to see if she was watching. William wanted to run across the road and lift the book himself, she was taking so long and looking so black about it, fingering the books and flipping their pages when she knew no more of her letters than the man in the moon. Then at last she slipped one into a fold of her apron, but looked at it as she did it, and used both hands so she nearly dropped the baby: it was clumsily done.

Suddenly the shop woman was there beside her, shouting, Now give me that, if you please, Missus, and they heard Ma cry out, too shrill, What! I have nothing of yours! but clutching at the book in the folds of her apron so it gave her away. The shop woman, a stringy old boiler, jerked her arm so Ma fell down on her knees and the book fell and the baby too, rolling onto the cobbles and setting up an almighty roar.

The shop woman pounced on the book, and, while she was stooping for it, Ma from her knees gave her a clout across the back of the head. Old and all as she was, the woman was up in a trice and hit Ma on the shoulders with the book—they could hear the thwack of it from across the street—all the time hanging onto her and yelling, Thief! Thief! Ma was up now, the baby under her arm, and she began to kick out the legs of the trestle and claw all the books till they lay in the mud.

This was the signal for the children behind the cart to rush over and grab at the scattered books. William got one in each hand, right under the woman’s feet, so she let go of Ma to grab them back, and when he stepped away, Ma ran and now the woman was spinning from one to the other in a dither. Two gentlemen stepped out of the Anchor to come to her assistance, but by then the Thornhills were gone like a lot of rats up the alley.

They got a book each. William’s was the best, red leather with gold lettering, good for a shilling at Lyle’s, no questions asked.

He grew up a fighter. By the time he was ten years old the other boys knew to leave him alone. The rage warmed him and filled him up. It was a kind of friend.

There were other friends, of course, a band of boys who roamed the streets and wharves together, snatching cockles off the fishmonger’s stall at Borough Market, scrabbling in the mud at low tide for pennies tossed by laughing gentlemen.

There was his brother James, a whippy boy who could climb a drainpipe quicker than a roach, and poor simple Rob smiling at everything he saw. There was bony little William Warner, the runt of a litter on Halfpenny Lane, and Dan Oldfield whose father had drowned, being the passenger in a wherry trying to shoot London Bridge at low water, the boatman half-stupefied with liquor at the time. Dan was famous for his ability to steal roast chestnuts from the pedlar in Frying Pan Alley, enough to be able to share them, hot out of his pocket, with the other urchins. One frozen morning at Dan’s suggestion he and William had pissed on their own feet: the moment’s bliss was almost worth the grip of cold that came after. Then there was Collarbone from Ash Court with the red mark across half his face. Collarbone liked Lizzie. She has skin like a nun, he told Thornhill, wonderingly, and then, perhaps thinking of his own livid skin, blushed red to the roots of his hair.

They were all thieves, any time they got the chance. The dainty parson could shrill all he liked about sin, but there could be no sin in thieving if it meant a full belly.

Rob came to the other boys in their little rat-hole by Dirty Lane one day with a single boot that he had taken from where it hung outside a shop. He would have got the other too, he said, but the bootmaker saw him in a looking-glass. The man ran after him, and caught him, Rob said, but he was old, and the boy was able to get away. William hefted the boot in his hand and said, But what is it worth to you, Rob, just the one? And Rob thought long, his face creased with the effort, then through his loose rubbery lips, on a spray of spittle, cried out, I will sell it to a man with one leg! It is worth ten shillings at least! and it was as if he already had the money in his hand, his face fat with satisfaction at his scheme.

When Lizzie played mother to John, and then to baby Luke after that, Lizzie’s friend Sal from Swan Lane became sister to William. Sal was the only fruit of her mother’s womb. Had been a bonny baby, but she had cursed the womb as she left it, for every baby after her sickened and died within the month.

Her family was a notch up from the Thornhills, for Mr Middleton was a waterman, as his father had been, and his father’s father before that. They had lived in the same street in the Borough for as long as anyone could remember, in a narrow house with a room upstairs, a fire of coals in the winter, glass in the windows, and always a loaf of bread in the cupboard.

But it was a sad house, filled with the tiny souls of those departed babies. With every promising son who had sickened and died, Mr Middleton became a sterner and more silent man. His trade was his consolation. He was out every morning, the first of the watermen to be waiting at the steps. He rowed all day and came home when darkness fell, never speaking, as if looking inward to his dead sons.

Sal’s Ma and Da were gentle with their precious child. The mother would hold the girl against herself, putting a hand along the side of her face, calling her poppet and sweet thing. Within the means of the household, Sal was indulged with every delicacy she could desire: oranges and sweetbreads and soft white bread, and for her birthday a blue shawl of wool as fine as a cobweb. It was another way altogether of being a Ma and a Da, and William— whose birthday was not even remarked—looked on wondering.

Sal flowered under such care. She was no beauty, but had a smile that lit up everything around her. The only shadow in her life was the graveyard where her brothers and sisters were buried. They haunted her, and made her puzzle, the way they had no life while she, deserving it no more than they, had all the love that should have been shared out. That shadow made her soft in a way new to William. He knew no one else like her, who could not bear to watch the head cut off a hen, or a horse beaten in the street. She had run at a man whipping a little dog one day, shrilling at him, Leave off! Leave off! and the man had shrugged her away and might have turned the whip on her, except that William pulled her, gripping her arms tight until the man and the cringing dog had disappeared around the corner, when she turned her face into his chest and cried angry gusts of tears.

It was easy to wish to belong in this house, number 31, Swan Lane. Even the name of the street was sweet. He could imagine how he would grow into himself in the warmth of such a home. It was not just the generous slab of bread, spread with good tasty dripping: it was the feeling of having a place. Swan Lane and the rooms within it were part of Sal’s very being, he could see, in a way no place had ever been part of his.

If he was haunted by the presence of so many brothers and sisters, Sal was haunted by so many absences, and the two of them found a comfortable common ground. They slipped off together, away from the mean smelly streets, striking out between the fields of turnips and cabbages, jumping over the ditches in which water lay all year, down to the patch of waste ground at Rotherhithe that they thought of as their own. There was a spot where bushes curved around in which they made a little hovel to shelter from the wind. Down there the big pale sky, the sheet of dun water, the sounds of waterbirds cawing, was a different place altogether from Tanner’s Lane, and William felt himself become a different kind of boy. He loved that place, its emptiness and its clean windy feel. No houses, no alleyways, nobody watching, except now and then the gypsies passing through, but they were soon gone and the place was theirs again.

When it started to rain, softly, evenly, persistently, he and Sal would still linger, a bag over their heads, watching the grey river dimple under the rain, not looking at each other, but staring out side by side, the rain a reason not to disturb the arrangement, a reason to go on sitting wedged up close together, watching the white puffs of their breath mingling.

Something about her face made him want to keep watching it. There was no remarkable feature to it, except perhaps the mouth, a top lip that was full all the way along, not thinning thriftily towards the corners the way most people’s did, so there was an impression of generous eagerness, as if at any moment she was about to smile and speak. He loved to watch that mouth, waiting for her to turn to him with a thought in her eyes that she would share with him, so they could laugh together.

With Sal there was no need to be a fighter or guard himself every moment. A boy could be a boy, and do foolish things, such as showing her how far he could spit. They watched the glittering gob fly through the air and land on the grass. When she tried, William watched her mouth as she pursed it up, gathering the spit, and shot it out. She could not spit as far as he could, but he let her think she could, so the pleasure of the moment would continue.

He loved the way she called him Will. His name had been used by so many others that it was stale with handling, but Will was his own alone.

At night, being kicked in the back by James, hearing Pa and Ma coughing in their sleep, Rob snoring and snorting beside him, the rats running through the rotting thatch, feeling the gooseflesh on his legs and his belly growling from having nothing but watery gruel in it all day, he thought of Sal. Those brown eyes, the way they looked at him.

Thinking of her, he was warmed from the inside.

During his mother’s last illness, the year William turned thirteen, the lions on the gateposts at

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