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Journal Entry 1 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Tuesday, November 14, 2006
 Shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize and winner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for overall best book. Not quite an "impulse" purchase, since it came so highly recommended, but a rare purchase of a full-price paperback on an idle lunch hour.
(Left: an 1816 drawing by Thomas Rowlandson illustrating the early watermens' reputation for getting trade by any means - - a group of watermen are coercing a potential passenger as she walks down Wapping Old Stairs. Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, London.)
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Journal Entry 2 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Tuesday, November 14, 2006
William Thornhill, born in 1777 into grinding poverty in Tanner's Lane, London, loses both his parents while still in his early teens. His friend Sal's industrious father, Richard Middleton, helps him secure a position as an apprentice waterman, rowing people and supplies between the docks at Rotherhithe, Wapping Bermondsey on the Thames. At the age of twenty-two, having completed his apprenticeship, he marries Sal, and their lives seem promising -- that is until Sal's parents die of lung infections, and Sal and Will are left effectively homeless.
Desperate to augment his meager waterman's income, Will turns to petty theft of goods being transported on the river -- in which everyone seems to be involved -- and ultimately gets caught stealing a few pieces of exotic lumber. Initially sentenced to hang, his sentence is commuted to life in New South Wales following a successful letter-writing campaign initiated by Sal.
The Secret River actually begins in 1806, as Will, Sal and their two children step off the boat -- blinking -- in Sydney Harbour at the culmination of a year long voyage. By 1813 Will and Sal have four children, with a fifth on the way, and Will convinces Sal to support his dream of acquiring land on the Hawkesbury River -- "black" country. Borrowing from real life accounts of 19th century massacres of indigenous Australians, the novel leads the reader step by step through the heart of colonial darkness, to a place most readers will long before have predicted they must inevitably reach. What I liked about this novel was that Grenville didn't even attempt to get inside the heads of the indigenous characters who Will and Sal rename and attempt to jolly along (something I've only seen one author do successfully -- Matthew Kneale in his English Passengers -- and many do unconvincingly, e.g. Rose Tremain's The Colour). What I didn't like was more a dislike of Will's character, really -- that he failed right up to the last scene in the novel to hear that little voice inside himself trying to tell him "you've fucked up".
You can read reviews of The Secret River in the Observer here, the Guardian here and the New Statesman here.
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The Secret River
