There have always been schemers and it seems they make schemers of their significant others too, despite themselves. The story unfolds in small chapter-fragments, their short paragraphs packed with gorgeous descriptions of the Australian landscape — “a slice of harbor rough and blue like lapis”, a stone overhang “with a fraying underside, soft as cake, that glowed yellow” — and compressed emotional power. I’ve only read one previous book by Kate Grenville, Sarah Thornhill the final book in her trilogy that started with The Secret River (although I didn’t realize it was part of a trilogy at the time). Inspired by the real life of a remarkable woman, this is an extraordinarily rich, beautifully wrought novel of resilience, courage, and the mystery of human desire.

Grenville invites the reader to reflect on the complex relationship between truth and falsehood, history and fiction…[A] stunning literary achievement.Grenville cleverly uses Elizabeth’s bland and pleasant missives home, showing that they were a carefully constructed fiction. Autorė rašo nepaprastai gražiai, melodingai ir įtraukiančiai, tačiau negaliu pasakyti, kad išjaučiau daugiau ką, nei tik pagrindinę veikėją – aišku, ji esminė, bet visgi – ne vienintelė, o ir autorė visai nesusikoncentruoja į tuos jos gyvenimo aspektus, kurie darė ją išskirtinę – verslininkės, fermerės, mokslininkės talentus. And it’s taken the skill of the author to turn these memoirs into an intriguing depiction of life for those early Australian settlers. The setting was good, the style literary but somehow I was left feeling unsatisfied, there just wasn't enough intimate detail to make me feel I'd really experienced the story, just watched it from the sidelines. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Valerie Bader and was initially daunted when I saw it had 131 chapters.

Traditionally he has been regarded as the founder of Australia's wool industry and Elizabeth has been acknowledged as helping him in years when he was back in England and she still in Australia with their children. What I loved about this book is the beautiful backdrops the author creates and characters who you end up really caring about as fact bleeds into fiction, shining a light on Elizabeth’s struggle to live her own life.Williams also invents a character through which to experience the world, and gives some of the real people nicknames.

The novel concludes with Elizabeth’s assertions of her sense of being at home in Australia, scaffolded by her knowledge that the property she loves is stolen Aboriginal land. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It is a complicated balancing act, and feels somehow unresolved — even in a novel that embraces the idea that fiction’s job is to frame questions in new ways and invite engagement, not answer or settle them. She was on her own – for four years during her husband’s first absence, nine years the second – in a brutal society, yet she came to thrive. Her novels have won many awards both in Australia and the UK, several have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.Reading her letters, you’d think he was a kindly, cheerful, reasonable man beloved of all around him. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. How did the demure farmer’s daughter from Devon with no substantial fortune wind up with a man so obsessed with his own status and advancement?

I felt him chuckle with pleasure when I got the knack of the little movement that made the milk hiss against the inside of the pail. She and John and their infant son landed in a new, raw, violent, hungry penal colony – a thousand convicts and a couple of hundred guards – six months’ sail from home. However one day she makes her companions swear to secrecy as she ventures further and then further and discovers the hut of William Dawes. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History. A Room Made of Leaves is the internationally acclaimed author Kate Grenville's first novel in almost a decade.Another book in her fantastic collection of work about early Australian colonial times and it’s at least as good, if not even better, than all the others… Absolutely brilliant. Despite having no feelings for her husband she begins a new life there; one that will last until her death in 1850. Having re-read this to prepare for a Book Club discussion, I am still captivated by the story-telling skill of Kate Grenville. The notion of not really getting the full take on current events, seemed as probable in events in that era. Shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2021, A Room Made of Leaves opens with that oft-used literary device, the discovery of a hidden cache of documents.