Book Review: Sarah Thornhill

Book cover of Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville. Photo / Supplied

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville
Text Publishing $50, out September 1

A terrible thing happened, that day, up at Blackwoods' place, in The Secret River, the first of Grenville's historical novels set in the penal colony of New South Wales. The natives had been playing up, there had been "depredations and outrages. There had been an affray and the settlers had dispersed them". So the local paper reported. "It was not exactly false. Nor was it the way Thornhill remembered."

The Sarah of the title of this, the third of the Sydney stories, is the youngest child of William Thornhill who, in the last pages of The Secret River, surveyed his great estate on the Hawkesbury River. He is a convict turned settler; he has done well; he has money and land and a fine family. This, the land, taken fairly, surely, because nobody had ever before bothered to settle it, was his reward. On the very last page of The Secret River Willliam surveys his estate, and wonders, "... why it did not feel like triumph".

That "affray", for one thing, which is the central episode of Sarah's life, although it will remain for her, and for most of her story, in the unknown past (although those of us who have read The Secret River will remember), is the eventually revealed canker at the rotten core of William's success.

But at the beginning there is an unlikely love story: Sarah and Jack. Jack is the oldest son of Jack Langland, another rough and successful settler, but not the son of Jack's wife. "Jack's mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead ... Everyone knew that Jack was half-darkie."

Jack is the trusted helper of the Thornhill family and best mate of Will, William's beloved son, named after him. William said of Jack, before all of the terrible things happened: "That Jack Langland, he'd say, good a man as ever you'd find. Honest as three men." Ma, stepmother of the Thornhill brood, is "not so warm to Jack".

Another child, a mute, malevolent, stolen child is brought by Jack to the Hawkesbury, from New Zealand, at Will's insistence. The reason for Will's wanting the child is the first of the tragic events that will lead to the unravelling of the past. A past which sits in the dark corners of the story, brooding, plotting, casting dark spells over a family, much like the child.

There is, possibly, another son, who is either an outcast from the family, or has cast himself out. He lives up the river and keeps dogs to keep family away. He is another of the river's secrets and Grenville is very good indeed at rivers and that harsh and beautiful Australian landscape, and at secrets.

And yet, Sarah's story is not as engaging as that of William's in The Secret River. Perhaps this is because Sarah, despite or because of all of her advantages, is not at heart or in intellect as interesting or complex a character. Or perhaps, because her story is told in the first person, we need other perspectives on her. Her voice, bright but illiterate, wears thin. And I couldn't believe in the final journey (meant here in the proper sense of the word "journey".)

There has been much silly debate in Australia about whether Grenville believes herself to be writing history. Anyone who has read her should be able to see that she writes historical novels, based, as she has said, on historical sources and characters.

She writes fiction. But we should still believe that a character is capable of such and such an action; that such a plot twist could have happened. It may well be that a historical character, a young woman, someone like Sarah, travelled to New Zealand, for the same reasons that the fictional Sarah does, and had the same experiences.

I just didn't swallow it, as fiction, and having loved The Secret River and The Lieutenant, it was not for want of trying.

Michele Hewitson is a Herald features writer.