Review by New York Times Review
In this historical novel, a British marine is inspired and troubled by clashes of culture and justice. THE Australian history that Kate Grenville learned as a schoolgirl in the 1960s was that of the explorers - "the Aboriginal people were mostly an adjunct," she has written; "between the lines was the message that they had more or less disappeared." Grenville makes that observation in a "writing memoir" about her novel "The Secret River," loosely based on the life of one of her own ancestors, a convict settler shipped to Australia in 1806. That book, which won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2006, was Grenville's attempt to use fiction to grapple with Australia's past in all its wretchedness and glory. Like the history she studied at school, Grenville's novel also leaves the Aborigines obscured, and deliberately so. Their "inside story," she explained, was for someone else to tell - she would simply "create a hollow in the book, a space of difference that would be more eloquent than any words I might invent to explain it." Grenville's new novel, "The Lieutenant," has much in common with "The Secret River." It, too, is inspired by fact: the lieutenant of the title, Daniel Rooke, is modeled after Lt. William Dawes, a British marine, and the book tells of his experience as a member of the so-called First Fleet of 11 convict-laden ships that reached Australia early in 1788. The Aborigines, as seen through Rooke's eyes, are again baffling, although thanks to Dawes's notebook entries, which Grenville weaves through her text, their story has more depth this time. As with many of Grenville's characters, Rooke is an outsider, an awkward child genius who grows into an awkward man. A whiz at math, astronomy and languages, he plays a bit part in Britain's battle against the American revolutionaries before joining the expedition to Australia. There, he manages to isolate himself from the rest of the colony in a makeshift observatory where he contemplates the Southern constellations and gets to know members of the indigenous Cadigal clan. One of them is a young girl who, just as in Dawes's story, helps Rooke take a few faltering steps into an alien culture. Grenville is right about the "hollow" - it is indeed eloquent in revealing the hopeless void that lay between the Aborigines and the Berewalgal, as the newcomers are called. When a prisoner is caught stealing potatoes, the governor decides that 200 lashes can serve two purposes: punishing the offender and educating the Aborigines. "There was British civilization, in the form of china plates and toasts to the king, and there was British justice." A local man named Warungin is the chosen observer, and as he watches the flogging, Rooke watches him. "Warungin was not thinking punishment, justice, impartial," Rooke thinks. "All he could see was that the Berewalgal had gathered in their best clothes to inflict pain beyond imagining on one of their own." That secondhand view of the Aborigines puts a lot on Rooke's shoulders and sometimes turns him into a kind of caped Enlightenment Man figure on a mission to expose the cruel truths about "civilized" society. When Rooke is ordered to join a punitive expedition to capture six Aborigines, he objects. "It was the simplest thing in the world. If an action was wrong, it did not matter whether it succeeded or not," Rooke realizes. "If you were part of such an act, you were part of its wrong." For Rooke, as well as his nonfictional counterpart Dawes, that principled insubordination helps ensure banishment from the colony, and both men end up in Antigua, committed to the cause of abolition. "The Lieutenant" is less a story of colonial struggle and encounter than "The Secret River," and more the richly imagined portrait of a deeply introspective, and quite remarkable, man. Alison McCulloch, a former editor at the Book Review, divides her time between Ireland and New Zealand.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Grenville follows The Secret River (2006) with another lyrical and literary exploration of the history of Australia. The lieutenant of the title is Daniel Rooke, a social misfit whose skill with numbers and interest in astronomy land him on a ship that is part of the 1788 First Fleet carrying prisoners to New South Wales. As the expedition's astronomer, he is able to absent himself from the activities of the prisoners and the rest of the marines and build a small observatory from which to observe the stars. Although the British are anxious to make contact with the natives, it is the outsider Daniel who wins their trust and who, with the help of a young girl named Tagaran, begins to enter their world by understanding some of their language. Loosely based on historical facts, this novel of discovery is about much more than exploring new lands. It is about one man's personal voyage into the heart of a people.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Grenville (The Secret River) delivers another vivid novel about the British colonization of Australia, this one a delightful fictionalization of the life of William Dawes, a soldier-scholar who sailed from England in 1788 with the first fleet to transport British prisoners to New South Wales. Dawes's stand-in is Daniel Rooke, a loner with a passion for mathematics and astronomy who makes a living as a marine. He joins the expedition with the hope of tracking a comet that will not be visible from Great Britain, building a makeshift hut and observatory separate from the settlement (largely so he can avoid his prison guard duties). Although food is insufficient and the marines are outnumbered by the convicts, there is little unrest, but while Daniel shifts his ambitions from identifying previously unnamed stars to discovering a language and culture unknown in England, tensions escalate between the newcomers and the Aborigines, forcing Daniel to choose between duty to his king and loyalty to a land and people he has come to love. Grenville's storytelling shines: the backdrop is lush and Daniel is a wonderful creation-a conflicted, curious and endearing eccentric. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Intellectually gifted but socially awkward, Portsmouth schoolboy Daniel Rooke routinely isolates himself from his peers to explore the mechanisms of logic, arithmetic, and Greek. When a mentor recognizes his potential and introduces him to the study of astronomy, Rooke believes that he has found his place and purpose in life. He volunteers for the marines and signs on as an astronomer with the First Fleet sailing to New South Wales in 1788. After his astronomical studies falter in Australia, Rooke becomes friendly with a group of Aboriginals, attempting to learn and transcribe their language. The bond he forms with a girl named Tagaran-who reminds him of his younger sister-takes Rooke by surprise and leads to an unexpected turning point in his life. Verdict Rooke is a genuine, sensitive protagonist, and this new novel offers a more intimate and optimistic perspective of Australian history than Grenville's award-winning epic, The Secret River. Grenville displays a graceful touch with the characters and the history that so clearly move her, and her writing sparkles with life. Highly recommended for readers of literary fiction. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/09.]-Kelsy Peterson, Johnson County Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Veteran Australian author Grenville (The Secret River, 2006, etc.) poignantly depicts a man of science forced into a world shaped by action. Growing up in Portsmouth, England, Daniel Rooke is scholarly and bookish, a scientific and mathematical prodigy with minimal social skills and little interest in anything nearer to him than the stars he rapturously observes. Reaching adulthood, Daniel joins His Majesty's Marines as a commissioned officer and navigator, sailing first on a warship patrolling the colonies during the American Revolution. In 1788 he signs on in a similar capacity aboard Sirius, flagship of a fleet bound for Australia to build a penal colony. Grenville subsequently records Daniel's enthralled introduction to this new land's untamed beauty, his hopeful creation of a makeshift observatory, where he can study the mysteries of the southern skies, and his disillusioning perception of his comrade's disdainful indifference to the gentle culture of the local aborigines. An officially ordered act of aggression challenges the integrity of this paradise, destroying Daniel's utopian contentment and his chaste relationship with a beautiful native girl, Tagaran, of whom he and we learn frustratingly little. (Her age and the nature of her feelings for the compassionate Englishman would have been helpful, for starters.) Written with exemplary simplicity and festooned with gorgeous images, the narrative focuses on the meditative inner life of its main character; too many other possibilities are unexplored, too many issues unresolved. Nevertheless, readers' hearts will go out to the grieving Daniel. An involving, affecting novel that should have been even better. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
