The Secret River

This book was my introduction to Australian literature. I loved its eloquent evocation of a world totally new and mysterious to its characters. Although I was vaguely familiar with Australia’s penal colony past and with the destruction wrought on Aboriginal lives and culture, this book brought it home. I deeply appreciated the way it took me into the minds of men and women, most of them well-meaning but ignorant, and showed me how they missed the point of where they were and how to thrive there. The tragedy of that ignorance resonates with me, since I see it all around… show more.

Kate Grenville explores colonisation and its impact on indigenous people through the eyes of settlers who are at times blind to their missteps – such as the removal of food crops that were important to the local Aboriginal population, the Dharug people of the Hawkesbury region. The vivid way Grenville exposes the brutality of the removal of Aboriginal people from their land will stay with me always. Grenville draws on her own family’s settler history to tell the story; aware of not being able to speak for the Aboriginal people’s experience, she includes only a few words of Aboriginal… show more.