A good historical novel illuminates the time in which it is set. It may convey information, but more importantly it shows it in a human context, putting the reader into the bodies and minds of the characters, feeling what it is like to live in that time and place, and sharing their personal dilemmas. Because it deals with human beings and human motives, the best historical fiction can thus confront moral issues, often of considerable complexity -- and moral insight, to my mind, is the highest goal of fiction.
Grenville's novel about the early settlement of New South Wales works perfectly on all these fronts. It told me a great deal that I did not know, especially the way in which convicts theoretically transported for life might apply for a ticket-of-leave after only a year and a full pardon a few years later, enabling them to claim land and become part of a workforce with strong incentives to develop the country in which they now found themselves. I gather that books such as
THE FATAL SHORE
by Robert Hughes and
A COMMONWEALTH OF THIEVES
by Thomas Keneally do this in greater detail, but Grenville made it seem personal, since she had already got me to invest in the life of her chief character and to experience things through his eyes.
William Thornhill, who is apparently based on one of Grenville's own ancestors, grows up as a boy in pre-Dickensian London at the end of the 18th century. It is a hard time, when most poor folk must resort to petty thievery in order to make ends meet. But Will is lucky; he is taken on as an apprentice waterman by the father of his childhood sweetheart Sal. Through years of hard work, he is eventually able to set up on his own, marry Sal, and start a family. All seems to be going well until his wiped out by a series of financial disasters, forcing him back into stealing to support his family. Inevitably he is caught, and is lucky to escape hanging. He is transported to Australia, and Sal and their son go with him.
Will is an interesting hero, strong and resourceful, devoted to his growing family, yet not above taking short cuts in order to protect them. Sal turns out to have strengths too, and though she does not embrace the pioneer life to the extent that her husband does, she constantly surprises Will by her practicality, understanding, and common sense. Within five years, Will has claimed some land on the banks of the almost-inaccessible Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, planting seed corn and building a shack for his family. It is almost a Robinson Crusoe existence, but the reader knows that between them Will and Sal have the determination to make it work.
All this is prelude, roughly the first half of the book. Almost imperceptibly (for Grenville is a gracious and subtle writer) the main theme of the book becomes apparent, although it had been announced in the book's dedication "to the Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present, and future." For this land being claimed by Will and others is not uninhabited, merely not settled in the European way. Inevitably, the colonists are going to come up against the original inhabitants, and because Grenville is so steady in her build-up, the reader has plenty of time to consider all possible responses. Grenville illustrates these within the small group of other settlers on the river, ranging from Will's former mentor Blackwood who tells him "A man got to pay a fair price... Matter of give a little, take a little," to Smasher Sullivan, who handles matters with dogs, whip, and gun. Grenville also shows the range of possibilities within Will's own family, from his belligerent elder son Willie to the quiet Dick, who feels the same connection to the land that the aborigines do, and would sneak off as a child to play naked with their children.
But the tragedy is that, when it comes down to it, few of these possibilities are possible at all. Ultimately it is the will of the community that prevails, and even fundamentally moral people such as William Thornhill may find themselves drawn into actions they consider repugnant in order to protect something yet more valuable: a wife, a family, and a land that he has grown to love.
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