It’s been years since Kate Grenville has published a new novel and in that time her star has risen with the popularity of her Secret River trilogy. A Room Made of Leaves, in its gorgeous green hardcover jacket, is arguably one of the most hotly anticipated books of the year.
Kate Grenville (Photo by Darren James).
The novel takes the guise of the imagined secret memoir of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of British officer-turned-wool-baron of early colonial Sydney, John Macarthur. Written history has much to say about John, the ignoble man whose ambitions for power and status were matched only by his general detestability, but all that survives of Elizabeth are a precious few politely-written letters. The Elizabeth of Kate Grenville’s imagination is nowhere near so polite.
Readers are taken on a journey from Elizabeth’s humble beginnings in rural England to her unlikely marriage to the brutish Macarthur, her new beginning as one of very few “ladies” in the new colony of New South Wales, and her eventual success as the true pastoralist that commanded the massive expanse of the convict-run Elizabeth Farm at Parramatta.
Grenville’s Elizabeth is a woman of independent thought, spirit, passion, and her own private desires. She finds satisfaction in her world by acting outside of her power-mad husband’s knowledge. As part of this personal freedom, Elizabeth has contact with some of the Gadigal and Cammeraygal women of the Sydney coastline. Based directly on the historical Elizabeth’s surviving letters, these were the moments I was most fascinated by in this story. They are wisely cast in severe contrast to the violent episode of the so-called “Battle of Parramatta” that occurs in later chapters.
An ingenious tapestry of history and invention, A Room Made of Leaves is a novel of womanhood, motherhood, secrets, lies, obsession, transformation and the loss of innocence. It’s a true pleasure to read Grenville’s writing, and this one’s been well worth the wait!
—A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (Text Publishing) is out now.
Listen to our podcast with Kate!
A Room Made of Leaves
What if Elizabeth Macarthur-wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney-had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That's the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.
Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none - this Elizabeth...
About the Contributor
Ben Hunter
Ben is Booktopia's dedicated fiction and children's book specialist. He spends his days painstakingly piecing together beautiful catalogue pages and gift guides for the website. At any opportunity, he loves to write warmly of the books that inspire him. If you want to talk books, find him tweeting at @itsbenhunter
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Comments
July 25, 2020 at 8:59 pm
Excellent podcast. Great insights into an iconic time, not long after the squatters effectively took Australia’s best lands with millions of sheep in only years. The Merino and their wool exported made a select few very rich indeed, with huge mansions.