The Lieutenant

Beautifully written, evocative and informative book. I have read the Secret River and several other books by this author. I can't understand why I hadn't heard about her before now. I think she is a superb writer, and her themes about Australia and the Aboriginal culture are so interesting. Deeply disturbing and distressing to learn how the Aboriginals were treated by white settlers. Kate Grenville enters into the place and time with amazing insight and sensitivity. Really enjoyed reading it.

An enjoyable read for anyone interested in the the history of the First Fleet and the opening up of New South Wales as a penal colony. Grenville has fused the stories of two lieutenants who came over with fleet and took a much closer interest than their superior officers in understanding the life, the cutlture and the language of the aboriginals who were being displaced and either collaborated or fought back for their land. She has made good use of the original notebooks of the astronomer-cum-linguist who attempted to speak and work out the grammar and vocabulary of the local dialect, no mean feat working from scratch! An imaginative reconstruction of the early days of the colony which became Sydney and Australia, clearly focused and researched and told with her usual fluency and skill.

This is the first book I've read by Grenville and I have to admit to being underwhelmed. Set at the end of the eighteenth-century, this tells of the first British landing in Sydney with a shipload of convicts and their guards. Amongst them is Daniel Rooke, a mathematician and astronomer, and a man always awkward with his peers and compatriots. His meeting with native Australians, however, changes his life.Part of my problem with this book is the narrative mode: everything is `told' to us, little is dramatised. As a consequence, there is very little work for us to do as readers: there's no need to read between the lines, or understand unspoken feelings and/or motives, everything is laid out in an overly simplistic fashion (`And everything in his life had been leading here. He saw it as clearly as a map, the map of his life and his character'.) Everything is on the surface of this book, with no richness, subtlety or ambiguities to be excavated by the reader.I enjoyed Rooke's unravelling of the Australian language, and the way he draws grammatical comparisons with Greek and Latin, the way he understands that language maps onto the way a culture thinks and constructs itself. But to off-set this, is a bare bones of a story where the conflict of loyalty is flagged miles off and repeats an event that happens earlier in the book. The climax, too, of Rooke's story happens offstage and is barely recalled from old age about 50 years later.The cultural `message' of the book is, of course, a worthy one - but hardly an original one or one that hasn't been treated in other literary fiction. So a disconcertingly simple story narrated in an unchallenging, sometimes flat style - disappointing.

This is a beautifully written book, with not a word - or even a comma - out of place. Kate Grenville's use of language is spare, economical and of a radiant clarity. Everything that needs to be said is said: scenery is beautifully described, characters are convincingly fleshed out, the plot unfolds in a linear fashion, without post-modern tricks. The novel is post-colonial, but rams no messages home (the author confines herself to telling the story, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions). The sensation, and the significance, of being one of the first Europeans to set foot on a continent that has remained undisturbed for millennia is hauntingly conveyed. Although based on extensive research, the novel does not scream 'I have been extensively researched'; the discovery, on reading the epilogue, that the story was based on real events and that the indigenous language was exactly as recorded by the eighteenth-century Englishman who is the model for Rooke came as an additional surprise and pleasure. The novel, although apparently simple in the best possible sense of the word, is profound in its implications and will resonate with me for a long time to come.

I have just finished the Kindle edition of this short novel, which I enjoyed very much. The author has based the story on known facts, but it is written as a fictional account, therefore I presume that is why names have been changed. I found this somewhat confusing as each protagonist is based on a real person, some of whose names most of us probably already know. Some reviewers have commented that the book ended somewhat abruptly, but I feel that the author has concentrated on the Australian part of "Daniel Rooke's" (William Dawes) life, but letting us know that he lived a full life after he was effectively banished from Australia. Looking back at history from what we hope are more enlightened times we realise he would have been just the right sort of person the new colony needed.

A well written most enlightening account of the First Fleeters, encouraging the readingand research for more detail of this period.It is of particular interest to those in South East Cornwall, where 'William Boughton Worgan' surgeon General to the First Fleeteventually settled. He took a piano to Australia, with the First Fleet. He and William Dawes, (Astronomer) did much to recordthe geology of the area and learn the Aboriginal Languages. Great men of adventure now long forgotten.

I enjoyed The Secret River by the same author so much that I bought this one too. Another great read. I would also recommend the companion book to The Secret River: Searching for the Secret River. For anyone who has tried to write a historical novel, the background to the story, the trials and tribulations of the author's research and how the book came about is fascinating. I had never heard of Kate Grenville until recently. An intelligent read but a page-turner too. A winning combination.