Ath book club June 2008
Kate Grenville - The Secret River (RATING: 4.5)
Following The Idea of Perfection was always going to be a tough call. Five years on from her Orange Prize-winning bestseller about middle-aged love in the Outback, Kate Grenville has turned to something quite different: historical fiction and a story about convict settlement.
This is a narrative whose outlines we know already: convicts transported to Sydney, eventually pardoned, encouraged to settle what seemed to be an empty continent. They didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have cared, that the land they were occupying was sacred to the mysterious, dark-skinned people who appeared and disappeared from the forests and seemed to them no more than naked savages.
Ath book club comments:
The Ath Book Club members were in agreement; not only is The Secret River well researched and beautifully written, it also received the highest score during the Ath Book Club’s existence: 4.5 of 5.
The members loved the descriptions of different scenery in London and early settlement in Sydney. The building of suspense and believable characters make history come alive. The Secret River is worth all the numerous prizes it has received.
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