A wrenching conclusion to a tough-hearted trilogy . . . Exuberant, cruel, surprising, a triumphant evocation of a period and a people filled with both courage and ugliness.”The New York Times Book Review
When The Secret Rivera novel about frontier violence in early Australiaappeared in 2005, it became an instant best seller and garnered publicity for its unflinching look at Australia’s notorious history. It has since been published all over the world and translated into twenty languages. Grenville’s next novel, The Lieutenant, continued her exploration of Australia’s first settlement and again, caused controversy for its bold view of her homeland’s beginnings. Sarah Thornhill brings this acclaimed trilogy to an emotionally explosive conclusion.
Sarah is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, the pioneer at the center of The Secret River. Unknown to Sarah, her fatheran ex-convict from Londonhas built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill is a man who has reinvented himself. As he tells his daughter, he never looks back,” and Sarah grows up learning not to ask about the past. Instead, her eyes are on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems idyllic, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush them both.
As she did with The Secret River, Grenville once again digs into her own family history to tell a story about the past that still resonates today. Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarahat once headstrong, sympathetic, curious, and refreshingly honestthis is an unforgettable portrait of a passionate woman caught up in a historical moment that’s left an indelible mark on the present.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
`Nothing ever gone, just you got to know where to look.’
By Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the figure at the centre of `The Secret River’. William was a transported convict, now `an old colonist’ who has a family, land along the magnificent Hawkesbury River, and money. No-one had settled this land before William, but even so, when he surveys his estate (on the last page of `The Secret River’): `He would not understand why it did not feel like triumph.’ Readers of `The Secret River’, knowing of the `affray’ at Blackwood’s will understand. But for much of Sarah’s story, this event is an unknown part of the past.Born in 1816, Sarah – called Dolly by her family – has played no part in the events of the past. Sarah’s story is told in the first person. We learn of her life and her loves, and her illiteracy shapes the narrative in particular ways. New South Wales is home for Sarah and her generation: they cannot share their parent’s nostalgia for Britain.Sarah’s first love is Jack Langland. Jack is the eldest son of Jack Langland, another settler, but not of Jack’s wife: `Jack’s mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead.’ Jack is the best mate of Will, William’s son, and is a well-known to, and liked by most members of, the Thornhill family. But events, assisted by Sarah’s stepmother, conspire to separate Jack and Sarah.After Sarah’s brother, Will, drowns on a sealing expedition to New Zealand, Jack brings Will’s half-Maori daughter to her grandfather. This is a pivotal and ultimately very unhappy event in Sarah’s story and has echoes from William Thornhill’s past.Sarah marries an Irish settler, John Daunt, and moves with him to the edge of European settlement. This is the part of the story I enjoyed most: the growing bond between John and Sarah. Here Sarah’s voice is strongest and her world comes to life.`That was what it was to belong to a place. To be brought undone by the music of the land where you’d been born.’I didn’t care for the end of the novel: while Sarah’s journey to New Zealand makes its own form of sense for the story, it didn’t work well for me in terms of the character. And it’s hard for me to reconcile the following passage (beautiful as it is) with Sarah’s illiteracy:`How will I ever find a way to tell everything that brought me here? How I found myself in that place where the winter never stops blowing and nothing lies between the land and the ice at the bottom of the world but an ocean full of dark water? How tell the story of me and Jack Langland and a girl who only ever had someone else’s name? Of those things left undone that we ought to have done, and those things done that we ought not to have done?Rippling away into all those lives, down along the fathers and daughters and granddaughters. Generation after generation, the things joining us and the things cutting between us. All made by something done so long ago.’This as a story about love, about family secrets, and about the hidden aspects of Australia’s past. But I found that I did not care as much for Sarah’s story as I did for William’s. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is the unevenness of Sarah’s voice, and another is the way the story ends. Although the three books are loosely linked as a trilogy, it isn’t necessary to read `The Secret River’ and `The Lieutenant’ first.I’d rate this book somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. Jennifer Cameron-Smith
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Pete’s Books
By Pete’s Books
I absolutely loved The Secret River and The Idea of Perfection, and I enjoyed The Lieutenant, but this latest effort is my least liked novel from this writer. I was definitely disappointed with this follow-up to The Secret River. I enjoyed most of the first 1/3 of the text but it quickly became too much of a soap opera after that, and I doubt few men would enjoy reading it. I might be wrong, but I think it is geared for the light romance reader, just in time for Xmas 2011. Unfortunately, I thought it was a follow up to The Secret River that probably should have been avoided.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Weakest in the Series
By Cariola
Third in a series based on the Thornhill family’s settlement in Australlia, ‘Sarah Thornhill’ is the definitely weakest installment. While it was a fast and fairly engaging read, I kept thinking to myself that I had read it all before. Grenville traces again the tricky relations between the white settlers and the black native inhabitants. At times, the blacks (and half-blacks) seem to be accepted–up to a point; at other times, prejudice is rampant. Sarah’s Pa, who was “sent out” (meaning he was sent to Australia as punishment for crimes committed in England), has made his way up in the world, accumulating money, land, and a bit of class, including a second wife with pretentions of joining the hoi polloi. The first half of the novel centers around Sarah’s growing love for Jack Langland, a half-black young man who seems to be accepted into the family circle. The two have pledged to marry, but when they make this known, Pa and Ma Thornhill make clear where the social and racial lines are to be drawn. As things start to fall apart, family secrets start seeping through the cracks–secrets that tear apart not only Sarah and Jack but the entire Thornhill family.On the plus side, Grenville draws a sharp portrait of the hardships of life on a new settlement as she focuses on Sarah’s newly married life with Irishman John Daunt. What she has to say about black-white relations, while painful, is fairly conventional and has been handled more deftly in other works.I have to agree with the reviewer who complained about the substitution of the word “of” for “have” (or, more accurately, the contraction ‘ve) throughout. Maybe the reason it bothered me so much is that, as an English professor, it’s one of the perennial errors in student papers that really grates on my nerves. Ex: “They must of took her to the cemetary, I said.” It’s true that Sarah is illiterate; but then she’s telling her story, not writing it down, so why not use the common contraction? By the time I got to the end of the book, I found myself starting to count “ofs” with my teeth set on edge. If it hadn’t been for this, I probably would have upped my rating.
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