The Secret River

This is a rather depressing novel by Kate Grenville, about the early days of white settlement in Australia. You can tell what’s going to happen from the first line, and the inevitability of it all adds to the gloom.

William Thornhill is born in poverty in London, works hard but still has to steal to stay alive. He’s caught and sent with his family to Sydney. There, he rises in the world through a mix of hard work and theft, and one day gets a glimpse of a beautiful point of land on the Hawkesbury river. He covets it and eventually camps there with his family. Of course, it’s already occupied by the local Aborigines. The same land, the same resources, and therefore only one choice – leave the place or get rid of the locals. Both sides have the opportunity to make the choice, both sides expecting the other to take the hint and leave. Small conflicts turn into larger ones until there is a massacre. The Thornhill family become wealthy and respected, with their lovely house on the point.

It’s a fast-paced story, which keeps you reading even though you know it’s going to end horribly. Grenville’s style isn’t anything unique – typical actually of an Australian writer, reminiscent of Malouf and Keneally and the rest – especially the characterisation and the dialogue. For some reason the way Australian writers put such awkward speech in their characters’ mouths really annoys me, like having to read the Yorkshire in Wuthering Heights. But apart from that, it’s a well-told novel with a calm and reasonable narrator putting down such terrible unknowable things.