The Secret River (NHB Modern Plays)

By Kate Grenville

William Thornhill arrives in New South Wales a convict from the slums of London. Upon earning his pardon he discovers that this new world offers something he didn't dare dream of: a place to call his own.
But as he plants a crop and lays claim to the soil on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, he finds that this land is not his to take. Its ancient custodians are the Dharug people.
A deeply moving and unflinching journey into Australia's dark history, Andrew Bovell's adaptation of Kate Grenville's acclaimed novel The Secret River was first performed by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2013.
The play had its UK premiere in August 2019, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, before transferring to the National Theatre, London.
'The Secret River is a sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss, competing distresses and the impossibility of making amends' Observer on the novel The Secret River
'A stunning and shattering piece of theatre' - Sunday Telegraph (Australia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Aug 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788502474

Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville is a prize-winning fiction writer whose novels include Lilian's Story, Dark Places and the Orange Prize award winning novel The Idea of Perfection. She lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter.

Book preview

THE SECRET RIVER

by

Kate Grenville

adapted for the stage by

Andrew Bovell

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Foreword by Henry Reynolds

Introduction by Andrew Bovell

Production Details

Acknowledgements

The Secret River

Prologue

Act One

Act Two

Epilogue

Music

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Foreword

Henry Reynolds

It was while walking over Sydney Harbour Bridge that Kate Grenville experienced the epiphany which led to the writing of her novel The Secret River. She took part in the great procession for reconciliation on Sunday, 28 May 2000. She caught the eye of a young Aboriginal woman who was watching the marchers file past. They exchanged smiles. At the time Kate was thinking about her ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, about whom there was a living tradition of oral history and which took her family’s historical memory back to the first generation of European settlement. She wondered if Wiseman had ever known the ancestors of the Aboriginal woman. What seemed even more significant was that the fleeting encounter took place directly above the likely location of Wiseman’s disembarkation from the convict transport in 1806.

Family history and the national desire for reconciliation met and merged. Both propelled Grenville into a period of intense research into the history of early New South Wales. On the one hand she came to appreciate the profound importance of the indigenous history which continued to run beside the well-known stories of white pioneers. An even more profound realisation was that when Solomon Wiseman ‘took up land’ on the Hawkesbury River, he had actually taken land from the traditional owners; that the family’s early opulence was based on expropriation. And that it was most likely effected at some time by indiscriminate violence perpetrated either by Wiseman himself or by friends and associates. Grenville’s experience mirrored that of Judith Wright a generation earlier. Wright had set out to write an account of her pioneering ancestors. As she proceeded she discovered how family members had moved north from New England and been involved in the violent settlement in central Queensland. Both poet and novelist were profoundly shaken by the unexpected turn in family history and their discovery of the long-hidden history of violence.

It took Grenville five years of research and twenty drafts before the book was published. It was dedicated to ‘the Aboriginal people of Australia: present, past and future’. Controversy swirled around her soon after it was launched in 2005: debate about fiction and history, intense at the time, distracted attention from the real significance of the work. But it did not deter readers. The book was reprinted ten times in two years. It sold over 100,000 copies and was subsequently translated into twenty languages. It won prizes both in Australia and overseas. Clearly The Secret River was a book for the times. Readers were avid for its message.

The same appears to be the case with Andrew Bovell’s stage play adapted from the novel. It was the first work commissioned by Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett for the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, soon after the initial publication. The time lag between novel and play has not diminished the power of the story. Capacity audiences in Sydney, Canberra and Perth in March 2013 gave the players standing ovations – sometimes after moments of stunned silence. Many people cried. Few were untouched. The West Australian observed how the river ran deep for the Perth audiences. Critics in Sydney declared that a classic of Australian theatre had appeared.

The success of the play can be credited to the actors, the production team, and especially to the celebrated director Neil Armfield. But underpinning all their creative endeavour was Bovell’s brilliant adaptation of the novel. His work was certainly facilitated by Grenville’s willingness to stay at arm’s length, requesting only that the script writing result in a good play. But even with the novelist’s detached cooperation the task was challenging.

Novels and plays share some things in common. They characteristically adopt a narrative structure and unfold stories through time. At their best they create characters whose personalities and passions drive the action forward. But the differences between the two genres are greater than the things they share. A novelist can use an abundance of words. Grenville unfolds her story over 330 pages in well over 100,000 words. She is able to provide almost endless detail about people and places and material objects. She can reveal her characters with a slow accretion of knowledge and insight in the way we get to know people in real life. So like anyone adapting a novel for the stage Bovell had to whittle the story down in time and place while maintaining the cast of principal characters and elucidating the most significant themes. He had to abridge rather than adapt, preserving the essence of the novel and those events and the dialogue which made it significant in the first place.

The 330-page novel was pared down in both time and space. The first two sections, set in London and Sydney, are jettisoned while providing Bovell with a past allowing retrospective allusions that enrich the dialogue and give added depth to the main European characters, William and Sal Thornhill. All the events take place on the banks of the Hawkesbury River over a seven-month period in 1813 and 1814. The central focus is on a forty-hectare patch of cleared land where Thornhill has decided to start farming with his wife and two boys. At one level it is a classic story of pioneering, of the hardships and vicissitudes experienced by aspiring smallholders all over the continent throughout the nineteenth century.

But the audience immediately knows that this is a much more complicated story. As the play begins an Aboriginal extended family of five adults and two boys sit around a campfire. An Aboriginal narrator sets the scene speaking in English, but the group around the fire use Dharug, the local language. There are no surtitles. The audience does not know what they are saying. This was a bold decision by Bovell, Armfield and his associate director, choreographer Stephen Page. It made sense intellectually to have the Dharug speaking the language of the place. It emphasised the difficulty they had in communicating with the settlers and in turn their difficulty in trying to make themselves understood. In this way the audience is drawn directly into one of the great problems of the actual historical situation. But it is a tribute to the Aboriginal cast that they fluently use, what to them is a foreign language, with such ease of expression that for much of the time the gist of what is being said is grasped by members of the audience.

They are able to intuitively appreciate the way the Dharug experienced the tension and the misunderstanding inherent in the situation. But the full understanding is provided by the six settlers who Bovell chose from Grenville’s larger cast, who come and go on stage, and above all by Will and Sal Thornhill and their two sons who build their hut and plant their corn on the Dharug’s yam ground. At the very centre of the drama is the fact that the two groups both claim and endeavour to harvest the same plot of land. The flat, fertile land which produced the yams was also the best land for growing corn. The deep resonance of the situation becomes apparent to the audience. Bovell astutely uses Thornhill as a colonial everyman to articulate the ideas about land which were repeated endlessly all over the continent and justified the endless expropriation. The audience knows, as Thornhill cannot, that his situation will be recapitulated for generations to come under many different skies.

The central problem is articulated when we first meet the Thornhills. Will declares he wants a piece of land he could put his name on. ‘And why not?’, he asks. ‘It’s there for the taking.’ To which his wife replies: ‘But how can it be? What about those that are there?’ He responds: ‘They’re not like us. They keep moving. They don’t dig down into a place. They just move across it. Put up a decent fence and they’ll get the idea.’ In conversation with his son, Will observes:

A tent is all very well, lad, but what marks a man’s claim is a square of dug-over dirt and something growing that had not been there before. This way, by the time the corn’s sticking up out of the ground, any bugger passing in a boat will know this patch is taken. Good as raising a flag.

He tries to explain the situation to the traditional owners, declaring:

This is mine now. That’s a ‘T’, Thornhill’s place. You got all the rest. You got the whole blessed rest of it, mate, and welcome to it. But not this bit. This is mine.

Bovell’s dialogue allows us to understand the settlers’ lust for land. They had been cast out from a society where land ownership was the key determinant of status. It was unthinkable that they could ever have become proprietors in Britain. And it was the apparent ease of acquisition which gave promise of a better life at the antipodes and what reconciled them to their exile. It was what converted unwilling exiles into committed colonists.

Both Bovell and Armfield gave the production an added dimension by offering intimations of what might have been a more conciliatory outcome of the encounter. The younger of the Thornhill boys plays happily with his Dharug counterparts. Several of the settlers have achieved a sort of accommodation.

Reviews for The Secret River (NHB Modern Plays)

[funstm · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Had to read for school. It's very long, very dense and very boring.

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story of the beginnings of colonialism in Australia. It opens in 1803 in England, where protagonist William Thornhill is meets and marries Sal. Their lives take a downward turn, and he is convicted of theft. Usually the penalty is hanging, but instead, he and his family are transported to Australia to serve his sentence. Eventually he obtains an opportunity to start farming a piece of land. The main thrust of the storyline is how the settlers interact with the native people.

Sal wants to return to England, which she still considers home. William wants to own the land. The land, including two nearby rivers, is difficult terrain to cultivate and it becomes almost a character unto itself. The relationship between humans and land is a primary theme. A sense of foreboding is generated, as the reader can feel the escalating tensions, which will force a confrontation.

The protagonist comes across as someone who wants to do his best to get along with everyone. He is not an evil man, though I cannot say the same for some of his neighbors. Communication is an issue. The concept of land ownership is an issue. Racism is an issue. And the reader can probably guess where it is all headed. It is a book about how a person can end up acting against principles. There are sections that are difficult to read due to hatred and horrific violence. I think it is a fine piece of writing.

[adrianburke_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyed although not quite sure I recognise the main character by the end.

[catherine_dilts · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The novel began with the brutal existence of a poor British man, and his consistent failure to get ahead in life, despite his efforts. Even the early days in the Australian penal colony were interesting. But toward the end, William Thornhill forgets half of what he learned along the way. This is a novel, and I had hoped for a more thoughtful, even uplifting, ending. Instead, Thornhill falls in lockstep with the very men he previously loathed, which perhaps was historically accurate, but fictionally unsatisfying. The one white character I found uniformly intriguing, son Dick, fades away at the end.

[lcl999 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Despite being highly commended, I had reservations about this book. It is too preachy. The white settlers are painted too black and the native aboriginals just too white, too good.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On the last day of the previous century I was concerned as to what might happen when the new century began. There were warnings that computer systems might fail and "Y2K" plans had been underway for months to deal with this issue. As I started to work on that day, I turned on my computer and pulled up the website for Sydney, Australia, which booming city was already celebrating the new century with fireworks. All was well as I returned to my work in Chicago. I note this episode because the Sydney in Kate Grenville's novel, The Secret River, is set at the beginning of the nineteenth century and it is a city of ramshackle buildings and tents, more like our old west than the metropolis it has since become. “It was a sad scrabbling place, this town of Sydney.” (p 75) This contrast highlights the changes that were started in large part by the prisoners, like William Thornhill and his family, who were exiled to Australia and formed the beginnings of that country.Sent to Australia because he tried to steal from his boss in London, William Thornhill became one of the first settlers in the Australian wilderness. The novel describes the conflict between the earliest settlers of the country and the natives of Australia as they clashed for ownership of the land. Themes include ownership, racism, social class and hope.Thornhill grew up poor in London but dreamed of a better future. He thought he was on his way to this better future when Mr. Middleton took him on as an apprentice as a waterman. He completed his apprenticeship successfully and married Sarah “Sal” Middleton, his childhood sweetheart. His father-in-law gave Thornhill his own boat as a wedding gift. Things were going well for the new couple until both Mr. and Mrs. Middleton got sick and died. Their care used up all of the money the two had in savings. Their property, including the boat Mr. Middleton had given Thornhill, had to be sold to pay their remaining debts. As a result Thornhill had to go back to working for others and was unable to make a living for his family. He was caught stealing in an attempt to feed his family and was sentenced to death by hanging.Thornhill received a pardon for his crime and was allowed to go to Australia to serve his sentence. The place was described as something “out of a dream, a fierce landscape of chasms and glowering cliffs and a vast unpredictable sky.” After one year of service with his wife as an overseer, Thornhill earned his ticket of leave allowing him to work for whoever he wanted. He eventually partnered up with Thomas Blackwood an old friend from London who transported crops and supplies to and from the settlers along the Hawkesbury River. Thornhill fell in love with a piece of property he saw along the river during his first trip. He convinced Sal they could earn enough money to return to England if they claimed a plot of land and farmed it. Eventually, though, Thornhill “saw what he had never seen before: that there could be no future for the Thornhills back in London.” (p 175) With this came the sad realization that he could not share this feeling with his wife who continued to dream of their eventual return.Once they were on the land in the wilderness, the Thornhills were regularly threatened by the natives who once had freely roamed the land. Although other settlers abused and even killed the natives, Thornhill just wanted to be left alone. Even though he wasn’t purposefully cruel to the natives, they came and stole most of his corn one day. After he and his workers ran them off, they returned that night and set fire to what was left. The author portrays the differences between the aborigines and the settlers in a way that reminded me of the contrast between the image of Rousseau's natural man and the Weberian concept of the Protestant work ethic. The two views of life did not mix well at all.When he was asked to assist a group of men going to ambush a camp of natives Thornhill agreed to go along and help. He knew his life would never be the same after he stooped to the level where he would help kill other human beings. After the natives were cleared from the area Thornhill and his family became successful on their land in Australia. They became the gentry they’d always dreamed of being in London. Even with his prosperity, Thornhill still used his telescope to scan the woods looking for the natives that once called that land their home.

[geoffsc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good easy read giving a live account of early settlement in Sydney and Hawkesbury area.
Her description of Will & Sal's slide into poverty, the desperation etc, is very real.
She is adept at getting you inside the mind of the lead character, Will, revealing his thoughts and feelings.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's better to be a thief than to become a gentleman. Anyway, that's part of the lesson I got from this book. Making a living in 19th century London is pretty tough unless you are a gentleman or willing to commit thievery. And the thieves who are not hanged might be lucky enough to be sent to Australia, to be forgotten, to live or to die, doesn't much matter. This is the story of a kind thief who got a second chance, but to me, became less and less likable as the story moved forward. The look into criminal-populated Australia is interesting. The too-common story of indigenous people being forced out by the newcomers is all too real, and all to sad. While this book dragged in places and could have perhaps been a bit shorter, it is a good bit of historical fiction, entertaining and engaging. I read an ebook edition provided through a Prime membership.

[bcrowl399 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[angelajmaher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The high quality of writing is obvious from the start. An unflinching, realistic slice of Australian history.

[missizicks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[carol420 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book describes an English family transported to New South Wales...Sydney and its surrounding area...after William is convicted of theft and sentenced to death or indentured servitude in Australia. Of course of the two choices Australia is looking pretty good. As William, attempts to work his way out of servitude, he falls in love with a parcel of land that’s in unsettled territory for the most part. There is also a large numbers of Aboriginal people already living there, and of course the settlers are anywhere from being wary of them to unbelievable cruelty. The struggle of this family is described in a way that is both understandable and horrifying. Most of the settlers at that time viewed the Aboriginal people as being less than human....and if any of the settlers who attempted to understand and establish a relationship with them were viewed with disgust. We see how even a person with good intentions might be led to commit terrible acts.Also interesting in this book was the tension between William and his wife. It’s maddening at times because they are clearly at odds, and despite her very strong wishes William has control of their lives...as was the usual in those times. Wiliams often comes across as thoughtless and uncaring, making promises he has no intentions of keeping. In the end you'll find yourself rooting for William as he attempts to become a better person.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[lydia1879 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

So I had to read this book for university.

And I really didn't like it. It's one of those books that I wish I didn't have to read. I definitely would've put it down were it not for the fact that I had to read it for a course. Even then, I half-listened to the last part of the audiobook, just to get it over and done with. It's such a shame because this is a piece of Australian literature, and I try, as an Australian, to champion as much of its literature as possible.

I don't like William Thornhill. And I know you're not really supposed to, he's not necessarily a likeable character and stands for a lot of unlikeable people that existed at that time, but ughhhhh Will Thornhill I seriously do not care about you, or your family, or your life. Your innate selfishness and sense of entitlement makes me feel ill, and it's so subversive.

But, in all honesty, I think I didn't enjoy this because I know so much early Australian and first contact history. (I studied it in university, as well as a few literature courses, and Spanish~). I know how ugly it all was, and still is. I know how hard it is to find pieces (oral or written) by Aboriginal people from that period.

... so, this, yeah. I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. It feels like another story, told from the same perspective. Yes, there are Aboriginal characters, they do feature, Grenville does include Australian Aboriginal hunting practices and all of those things, but something about them still feels 'Other'. Of course, Grenville may have felt it wasn't her place to write from an Aboriginal perspective when she doesn't identity as Aboriginal, but there's something about the indigenous characters in this story that makes them almost completely voiceless.

The writing is fine, the plot is decent, the character arcs and developments are interesting enough, but I cannot ignore how this book makes me feel.

And so, because of how this book makes me feel, I'll have to give it one star.

[edwinrelf_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[busterrll · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Slow start - better at end

[bagpuss-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although the ending was a bit of a disappointment, I really enjoyed this.

[janerawoof · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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."

[aine.fin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[thewasp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[amme_mr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[librarycin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.5 starsIt is the early 1800s and William Thornhill is a convict in England and is sent to the penal colony in Australia, where he is joined by his wife and young son. In Australia, he is able to take over some land to build a new life. Of course, the Aboriginals are already there on that land. The premise of the book sounded interesting to me, but the execution wasn't my kind of thing at all. It is very literary and has won awards, which is appealing to some, but not necessarily my thing. I was bored through the first 2/3 of the book, but it did pick up for me in the last 1/3, once there was interaction with the Aboriginals (hence, the extra ½ star). The use of italics for dialogue also drove me a bit nuts (and the author admitted in her note that some people might not like that; see my hand go up...). I did find that note at the end interesting.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

William Thornhill is sent to jail in London for thieving. He gets the opportunity to choose between a punishment of death in England or exile to Australia, so his wife Sal and their infant are soon on their way to the outback. Once there life is anything but simple. As the couple struggle to survive they are tested on every front.Where Thornhill sees an opportunity his wife sees a lonely life in the wilderness. They decide to take their chances and begin to farm. They are soon introduced to the small community in the area and the contentious relationship between the native aboriginal people and the new English immigrants. Many misunderstandings arise because of the cultural differences between the people. The people have a hard time finding common ground because of their unique view of landownership and very different styles of celebrations.Fear is what drives people to destroy what they don’t understand. The tragic consequences are a stain on the entire country’s history. They haunt the characters long after they become a distant memory. I loved that the story gives a voice to both sides of the issue. Many of the white people didn’t understand the harm they were doing. They were afraid and when they decided to act in fear they were bound to make a bad decision. The persecution of the aboriginal people is shown in a way that allows the reader to understand how things could have escalated so quickly.BOTTOM LINE: The story is a powerful one. It revisits the age old question; do the ends justify the means? For me the characters were a little stale, but I have found myself thinking about different aspects of the plot since I finished it two months ago. It’s not one I’ll reread, but I think it offers a valuable glimpse into the difficult relationship between immigrants and the native people in any country. 

[japaul22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an excellent historical fiction novel about life in the early colonies of Australia, or New South Wales as it was called at the time. The book follows the life of William Thornhill who grows up in utter poverty in London at the end of the 18th century. He falls in love with and marries Sal, whose father works on the Thames and apprentices William as a waterman. Things start to turn the corner for William and he sees a way that his life could turn out ok. Unfortunately circumstances change and he ends up in Newgate for stealing, condemned to death. He is granted life, but shipped with his wife and son to Australia. This first part of the book was familiar and nothing new to me - I've read many historical fiction novels about the poor and down-trodden in London - but the life the family leads in New South Wales was a different story. Thornhill fairly quickly buys his pardon and gets enough cash working on the water to have some options. The one he chooses is to break into the uncharted forest with his young family, staking his claim on a hundred acres of land with no regard for the native blacks who already live there. The struggle between him, the other white settlers, and the natives is dark and brutal. I certainly wasn't rooting for Thornhill or the other settlers. Grenville does a convincing job of portraying the mindset of Thornhill, how he could think it was his right to claim this land, without beating the reader over the head with "deep messages". I thought she also kept an eye on how his time in poverty and as a prisoner affected his need to own land and kept him always wanting more. The book is told from the perspective of the white settlers, but she manages to still show how well the native society functioned, even though it was so different from the white society and the settlers really didn't understand or value it at all. Overall, I thought Grenville handled this time period with a lot of insight and depth. Though the subject matter was hard to read about, I highly recommend this book.

[cacky_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[edgeworth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

William Thornhill is born into poverty in 18th century London, only achieving modest prosperity after being apprenticed to his childhood sweetheart’s father and becoming a bargeman working on the River Thames. But after the death of his parents-in-law, the accumulation of debt and repossession of his boat drives them back into the spiral of poverty, and Thornhill begins thieving to make ends meet. Caught and convicted of stealing a load of Brazil wood one night, he is sentenced to transportation to New South Wales, accompanied by his wife and infant child.Australia, though a harsh and alien land to the English convicts, was in some ways also a land of opportunity. Granted his ticket of leave, Thornhill soon realises that this is a place where he can accomplish something impossible for him in England: the possession of land. Establishing a freehold on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, he has his first encounters with the native Aboriginals, and soon comes to realise that he can only accomplish his dream by dispossessing others of their land.Grenville’s sense of place is evocative. You can feel the cold fog of London, Thornhill working in the Thames up to his waist, the living hell of Newgate Prison. The scruffy, struggling colony of Sydney is equally as immersive – the heat, the insects, the bizarre nature of the trees to a European eye:She was inclined to take it personally about the trees,wondering aloud that they did not know enough to be green, the way a tree should be, but a washed-out silvery grey so they always looked half dead. Nor were they a proper shape, oak shape or elm shape, but were tortured formless things, holding out sprays of leaves on the ends of bare spindly branches that gave no more protection from the sun than shifting veils of shadow.The Secret River runs an inevitable course towards violent confrontation between the settlers and Aboriginals, but does so without seeming preachy or heavy-handed. The novel is told entirely from Thornhill’s point of view, but despite being pushed into horrific acts, he remains a sympathetic character. There is no question that the British Empire brutally dispossessed Australian Aboriginals of their land, their culture and their heritage, and that they remain a discriminated underclass two centuries later. But what had never occurred to me before was that in many cases, the people directly killing them and taking their land were an underclass themselves: Britain’s poor, forced into crime by desperation, and sent to a distant land where their only chance of prosperity was to go to the fringes of settled land and naturally come into conflict with the locals. Thornhill’s determination to own land is not motivated by greed, but by fear; he knows what it is to be poor, and wishes to secure a future for his children. It’s a sad story, and Grenville masterfully balances our sympathy for the Aboriginals with our sympathy for a poor, stricken man given the tantalising chance to create a bulwark against starvation and misery.The Secret River is excellent historical fiction; I could recommend it for the opening London chapters alone. But it becomes truly great after Thornhill’s transportation to Australia – a sad and frightening novel of two cultures colliding.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Author Kate Grenville paints a powerful picture of the conditions that were awaiting the early convicts that were transported to Australia and the conflict between them and the Aborigines in The Secret River. Sent to this new and strange land not by personal choice but from conviction by an English court and, after working off their sentence, it was very difficult to return to England. Instead they were encouraged to claim a piece of land from this seemingly empty continent. Of course the fact that it was populated by a native population was discounted and these people were dismissed as “naked savages”. That this was the way of things time and time again as white people “discovered” new continents does not make this story any less harsh.William Thornhill was born into the lowest class of English society, raised in poverty, and even though trained as a waterman on the Thames River, still had to rely on petty thievery as a way of making ends meet. He was eventually caught and sentenced to be transported to Australia. Along with his pregnant wife and young son, he embarked on a life changing adventure. It wasn’t long before Thornhill knew that he had no desire to return to England, that he and his children had a far better chance at improving themselves by staying in Australia. His wife, Sal, felt different and was counting the days until they could return. Taking up property and building themselves into people of consideration was his goal, but standing in the way were the Aborigines who felt that these interlopers had no right to fence the land or claim the crops as their own. When violence escalated, Thornhill had to make a difficult decision. Pack up and leave or stay and sweep the Aborigines from his land.This was a wonderful piece of historical fiction both well written and researched. The characters, especially William Thornhill are complex, multi faceted people that express real human emotions. There is a general sense of foreboding as we can see both a future confrontation between Will and his wife, as well as the build up of tensions with the natives. The author tells a very emotional story without the reader feeling manipulated. This is an in-depth look at how this land was settled by violence through mutual incomprehension and lack of understanding.

[brocade_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.