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“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.”
I have to admit, when I spotted the endorsement “2006 Man Booker Prize Finalist” on the cover of thi ...more
I have to admit, when I spotted the endorsement “2006 Man Booker Prize Finalist” on the cover of thi ...more
I had never read much historical fiction about the early convict transports to Australia. It was a brutal life but I enjoyed reading something other than European and American history.
The Secret River works on several levels. As a history of Australia and the white man's interaction with the native population, it provides the reader with an intelligent and heartbreaking protrait of the clash of cultures. As a novel, Grenville weaves a compelling story of one man's road from abject poverty in eighteenth century London to prison and his eventual sentence to the then newly settled New South Wales. As a glimpse of the raw beauty of Australia and one man's desire for something to
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This book let me down. It just didn't live up to the hype (admittedly, my own) that was set for it. The book had so much potential as great historical fiction, as a character story, as a love story ... even just as a story of man bounced around by the circumstances of life and how he weathers those changes. It could have been any of those; it tried to be all of them and succeeded at being none. I wish I felt differently. I WANTED to feel differently. It's not like I hated the book or it was such
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Sep 18, 2011
Stephanie
marked it as to-read
Oct 11, 2011
Hege
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Oct 12, 2011
Carmen
marked it as to-read
Dec 12, 2011
Pragya
marked it as to-read
Mar 05, 2012
Kat
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
udate,
historical-fiction
May 26, 2012
Diane
marked it as to-read
Sep 03, 2012
Dee
marked it as to-read
Nov 30, 2013
Kimberly
marked it as to-read
Mar 16, 2014
Diane
marked it as to-read
Jun 15, 2014
Jane
marked it as to-read
Dec 31, 2017
Karawan
marked it as to-read
May 04, 2021
Christelle
rated it
liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
2021-reading-women-challenge
