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Evocative look at colonization
By Susann Cokal |
September 9, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
KATE Grenville's latest novel, "Sarah Thornhill," provides a wrenching conclusion to a tough-hearted trilogy about the colonizing of Australia. In her previous excursions into this rough, unforgiving land, ship loads of transported convicts, indentured servants and down-on-their-luck gentry were seen carving out English-style estates and tangling with aboriginals who somehow - to the newcomers' astonishment - couldn't accept the fact that they'd been conquered. By the time the heroine of this new book is born, in 1816, the country's future is almost settled.
At first, the novel appears to be a classic romance, vivaciously narrated in Sarah Thornhill's locally inflected voice. Growing up illiterate in an isolated community, she falls in love with her older brother's friend, handsome Jack Langland. He's a sailor who visits her family when he's not at sea and brings her presents from the time she's little enough to squeal over a pretty pebble until she's old (and daring) enough to press her adolescent hip against his on the parlor sofa. She dares even more when she visits his bedroom, delightedly discovering that sex is "the most natural and lovely thing," making her feel as if "I'd been only half awake all my life, only half alive." Visiting a cave where she once played house, she and Jack make plans for a home of their own.
But there's an obstacle: Jack Langland is only half white. He looks sufficiently respectable, could even pass for Portuguese, but that's not good enough for Sarah's family - even though her father was one of the original convicts transported from London, now known delicately as "an old colonist." And although Jack has been accepted as an overnight visitor to the Thornhills' house for years and is cherished as a great teller of tales at the table, when Sarah announces her intention to marry him the family's reaction will astonish her - as will Jack's.
Concluding a hardscrabble series with a story that initially appears so romantic is a daring move. Readers who pick up "Sarah Thornhill" might at first be tempted to lump it with well-known Australian melodramas like "The Thorn Birds;" those who've read the other volumes ("The Secret River" and "The Lieutenant") may search in vain for the dramatic events with which those books begin. But in this new one Grenville (who has collected an armful of awards, including the Orange and Commonwealth Prizes) constructs a plot with as many twists as the river that runs through the Thornhills' property. She punctuates the early narrative with ominous hints about what Sarah's father has done to secure his wealth and social position and suggests that Sarah's curiosity about this will eventually lead her astray.
With characters whose pasts are as dark and broken as these, this crew are always looking over their shoulders, sometimes to their detriment. And because of that, "Sarah Thornhill" can't be easily categorized - exuberant, cruel, surprising, a triumphant evocation of a period and a people filled with both courage and ugliness.
At first, the novel appears to be a classic romance, vivaciously narrated in Sarah Thornhill's locally inflected voice. Growing up illiterate in an isolated community, she falls in love with her older brother's friend, handsome Jack Langland. He's a sailor who visits her family when he's not at sea and brings her presents from the time she's little enough to squeal over a pretty pebble until she's old (and daring) enough to press her adolescent hip against his on the parlor sofa. She dares even more when she visits his bedroom, delightedly discovering that sex is "the most natural and lovely thing," making her feel as if "I'd been only half awake all my life, only half alive." Visiting a cave where she once played house, she and Jack make plans for a home of their own.
But there's an obstacle: Jack Langland is only half white. He looks sufficiently respectable, could even pass for Portuguese, but that's not good enough for Sarah's family - even though her father was one of the original convicts transported from London, now known delicately as "an old colonist." And although Jack has been accepted as an overnight visitor to the Thornhills' house for years and is cherished as a great teller of tales at the table, when Sarah announces her intention to marry him the family's reaction will astonish her - as will Jack's.
Concluding a hardscrabble series with a story that initially appears so romantic is a daring move. Readers who pick up "Sarah Thornhill" might at first be tempted to lump it with well-known Australian melodramas like "The Thorn Birds;" those who've read the other volumes ("The Secret River" and "The Lieutenant") may search in vain for the dramatic events with which those books begin. But in this new one Grenville (who has collected an armful of awards, including the Orange and Commonwealth Prizes) constructs a plot with as many twists as the river that runs through the Thornhills' property. She punctuates the early narrative with ominous hints about what Sarah's father has done to secure his wealth and social position and suggests that Sarah's curiosity about this will eventually lead her astray.
With characters whose pasts are as dark and broken as these, this crew are always looking over their shoulders, sometimes to their detriment. And because of that, "Sarah Thornhill" can't be easily categorized - exuberant, cruel, surprising, a triumphant evocation of a period and a people filled with both courage and ugliness.
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