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64th out of 326 books
—
66 voters
The Colour
by
Rose Tremain
Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets of...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
April 29th 2004
by Vintage
(first published May 1st 2003)
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4.5 stars
The Colour is set in 1860s New Zealand, a time of mad rushing for gold as well as nation-building fueled by heavy immigration. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone arrive from England with Joseph's widowed mother Lillian in tow. Joseph acquires some land, builds a temporary house, and they begin the work of establishing a farm. But Joseph is distracted by gold fever after finding some of "the colour," and he is haunted by memories of the heinous act that led to his flight from Englan...more
The Colour is set in 1860s New Zealand, a time of mad rushing for gold as well as nation-building fueled by heavy immigration. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone arrive from England with Joseph's widowed mother Lillian in tow. Joseph acquires some land, builds a temporary house, and they begin the work of establishing a farm. But Joseph is distracted by gold fever after finding some of "the colour," and he is haunted by memories of the heinous act that led to his flight from Englan...more
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I recently became curious about Rose Tremain when she featured in a "Good Fiction Guide: 4000 Great Books to Read" and I realised I only knew about her, never actually read anything by her. So I picked up The Colour, published in 2003 already, from my book club. I now see in the reviews that the book is considered "distinctly different" from other Tremain books. My original object thus defeated.
But... what a treat it was!
"Deliberate, forthright, careful and cool, it ranges across a riot of inter...more
But... what a treat it was!
"Deliberate, forthright, careful and cool, it ranges across a riot of inter...more
5 likes · like · see review
An incredible story about the gold rush in Australia, beautifully written, the best Rose Tremaine I've read. Read it.
2 likes · like · see review
When I first picked up "The Colour", I didn't know what to expect. I had only read one of Rose Tremain's short stories, I knew virtually nothing about New Zealand apart from what little I'd heard in the news, and I certainly did not understand the Gold Rush at all. In fact, I never knew there was one in New Zealand, too.
What first impressed me was the storybuilding. We get to know Joseph, his mother Lilian and his wife Harriet, who have come to New Zealand from England to start again. They seem...more
What first impressed me was the storybuilding. We get to know Joseph, his mother Lilian and his wife Harriet, who have come to New Zealand from England to start again. They seem...more
1 like · like · see review
The saving grace of historical fiction is that thanks to the subject matter it is almost always interesting, despite the frequent lack of any literary merit.
It would be an unfair exaggeration to say that The Colour lacks any literary merit, but it wasn't great, to tell the truth. The plot was interesting enough: a Joseph Blackstone takes his wife, Harriet and mother, Lilian, to New Zealand at the time of the Gold Rush to start a new life. However, their small world of cows, trees and gardening c...more
It would be an unfair exaggeration to say that The Colour lacks any literary merit, but it wasn't great, to tell the truth. The plot was interesting enough: a Joseph Blackstone takes his wife, Harriet and mother, Lilian, to New Zealand at the time of the Gold Rush to start a new life. However, their small world of cows, trees and gardening c...more
Ugh! This was one of those books that had a good beginning, about 70 pages or so, and then went tremendously downhill.
The novel follows a husband and wife who have decided to start anew in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century only to be thwarted at every turn and estranged. Blah blah blah.
So if that WAS the story it might have been an ok read. The writing was nothing impressive, but the initial renderings of the characters was well done.
And then the author sort of goes beserk. She adds a da...more
The novel follows a husband and wife who have decided to start anew in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century only to be thwarted at every turn and estranged. Blah blah blah.
So if that WAS the story it might have been an ok read. The writing was nothing impressive, but the initial renderings of the characters was well done.
And then the author sort of goes beserk. She adds a da...more
6 likes · like · see review
I'm one of those very superficial people for whom the setting of a novel is critical. I don't like, or am bored by, the country/city/region where the characters are flung, I don't read the book.
I even have prejudices against whole eras. Take the Upper South in the twentieth century. Please.
So it was with incredulity that I found myself reading with snowballing fascination and joy 'The Colour.' It's set in New Zealand in gold rush times---a seeming nonstarter for me, to put it mildly. And yet. A...more
I even have prejudices against whole eras. Take the Upper South in the twentieth century. Please.
So it was with incredulity that I found myself reading with snowballing fascination and joy 'The Colour.' It's set in New Zealand in gold rush times---a seeming nonstarter for me, to put it mildly. And yet. A...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Aug 02, 2010
Kathleen Hagen
added it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
2010-audio-books,
2010fiction
The Color, by Rose Tremain, narrated by Eleanor Bron, produced by BBC-WW, and downloaded from audible.com.
I have never read one of Tremain’s books, but this one is on the 1001 books to read list. Joseph Blackstone does not want to live in England now because of some trouble he got in over a young girl, so he decides to move to New Zealand. He finds a governess looking for a husband, and decides she will be a good wife to help him homestead in New Zealand. He also decides to uproot his mother and...more
I have never read one of Tremain’s books, but this one is on the 1001 books to read list. Joseph Blackstone does not want to live in England now because of some trouble he got in over a young girl, so he decides to move to New Zealand. He finds a governess looking for a husband, and decides she will be a good wife to help him homestead in New Zealand. He also decides to uproot his mother and...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
The Colour is, on the surface, the story of a man and woman who flee England for different reasons to New Zealand in order to make their fortune. What could have been an ordinary, but hard life and... perhaps one of satisfaction and eventual comfort is taken away by a smattering of gold dust that appears in a trench that the man begins to build.
And so the fever for gold takes root. Joseph and Harriet are married and living with Joseph's mother in "The Cob House", a rickety, temporary home built...more
And so the fever for gold takes root. Joseph and Harriet are married and living with Joseph's mother in "The Cob House", a rickety, temporary home built...more
From musings: 4.5 stars. The story is told from alternating points of view with chapters narrated by Harriet, Joseph, and a couple of other characters who weave nicely into the storyline. Joseph turns out to be an arrogant and hapless loner, unable to relate to women and desperate to please his mother by accumulating wealth. Harriet is strong and independent, undaunted by Joseph’s failings and refusing to bow to societal expectations of women. It is only through Harriet’s intelligence that the c...more
No question that this is an intelligently written book about a husband and wife (and his mother) who end up seeking their fortunes in gold and trying to build a meaningful life in New Zealand. I enjoyed reading the words and participating in the life of the characters. But in some respects it made me sad because there never seemed to be any sense of satisfaction or happiness - ever. It was actually fairly realistic of what it was actually like. I would have probably felt the same way about this...more
I read this book because it was the monthly choice of a Reading Group that I have just joined. I enjoy reading groups for many reasons, but mostly because they challenge me to read things that otherwise I wouldn't have read
For me this was a very good book with a great narrative and excellent characterisations. It's heartwarming and heart rending in equal measures. I would definitely consider reading more from Rose Tremain
For me this was a very good book with a great narrative and excellent characterisations. It's heartwarming and heart rending in equal measures. I would definitely consider reading more from Rose Tremain
I just loved this book, about a couple who buy a farm and emmigrate to New Zealand in 1864. It gripped me from the first page.
Joseph Blackstone takes his new wife and his mother to New Zealand to start a new life. He is a selfish, self centred man who refuses to listen to other peoples advice, he married his wife for all the wrong reasons. She is strong and determined and is sure she will make a success of their new life. Joseph's mother just misses England and her late husband too much to be o...more
Joseph Blackstone takes his new wife and his mother to New Zealand to start a new life. He is a selfish, self centred man who refuses to listen to other peoples advice, he married his wife for all the wrong reasons. She is strong and determined and is sure she will make a success of their new life. Joseph's mother just misses England and her late husband too much to be o...more
The “colour” is the gold that miners seek to find in New Zealand in the gold rush in the 1860’s. Newly-weds Joseph and Harriet and Joseph’s mother Lilian move to New Zealand from England to start a farm there. Joseph has some awful secret in his past that his wife and mother don’t know, and this knowledge weighs Joseph down as he tries to forget about it. The family has many misfortunes and tragedies, and after Joseph finds traces of gold in a pond on their property, he decides to go to the gol...more
The Colour was an interesting book. Beautifully written, it’s about a newlywed couple, Joseph and Harriet, who emigrate from the comforts of England to the wilds of gold rush-era New Zealand. With them is Lillian, Joseph’s mother, who resents everything about the move, but is dependent on her son for her livelihood. When Joseph discovers gold dust in the creek on their fledgling farm, he’s bitten by gold-rush fever and takes off to stake his claim, leaving Harriet and Lillian to fend for themsel...more
I know so little of New Zealand's history...never realized there was a major gold rush there in the mid 19th century. What people will subject themselves to in the quest for gold, the obsession they have to strike it rich never ceases to amaze me. The real focus of the story, however, is the courage and stamina of a woman trapped in a bad marriage, stranded in the miserably harsh country near Christchurch when her husband turns out to be less than she expected. She is happier when he leaves for...more
Just finished this at Penny's suggestion. Not the sort of book I would normally read but very well written with a lot of depth. A young couple and the husband's mother emigrate to New Zealand to start a new life on a small holding in the middle of nowhere at some point in the 19th century. As the novel progesses it becomes clear that their relationship is fragile and, when the husband discovers some traces of gold on their small holding, he sets off for the gold fields on the west coast of the i...more
I found this book slow at times until I began to understand the author's intention. It works on many levels, literal, figurative and symbolic. For example, the family name is Blackstone suggesting coal, yet the colour that is before them is gold. At the same time, the characters seek life and generally have to struggle with imminent death. There are some intriguing secondary characters, such as the Maori servant who communes with her ancestors, the urchin boy who sells sexual favours to the mine...more
I loved this book so much. This author writes in a fantastic way and the book is fantasical so that is maybe irony. There is nothing boring in this book on any single page. So much is going on and you can hardly keep breathing when you read which is a good thing in this case. When characters change, the changes seem real. Even though a lot of people on this website who comment on books call them beautiful, I usually wouldn't say that, but this book was beautiful to me. I hope someone who is in c...more
My mum raved about this, but I was not as gripped from the start as she was, but in the end I could not put it down. This is my fourth Rose Tremain and I'm amazed at how completely different each one is from the others. This one is set in New Zealand at the time of the Gold Rush. Joseph Blackstone takes his new wife Harriet and his mother Lillian to the New World to set up a farm. He gets a glimpse of 'the colour' in the water on his land and starts to pan for gold secretly. He then goes off to...more
This book is a well-structured novel, as opposed to one of the poor docu-drama excuses for historical fiction that one sometimes happens to stumble across. The setting is the New Zealand gold rush of the mid-1800s, but the novel is an exploration of survival in a harsh landscape, human motivation, the ability or inability to love, the spiritual vs. physical world, and the capacity to recreate oneself. The writing is lush without being overbearing, and every character, every image, has resonance...more
"She was a woman who longed for the unfamiliar and strange. As a child, she'd seen it waiting for her, in dreams or in the colossal darkness of the sky: some wild world which lay outside the realm of everything she knew."
Recently, I signed up to a summer reading challenge being organised through my local library service.
To tie in with the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, the challenge is to read 6 books from different continents with the aim of expanding our reading experiences and broadeni...more
I could not to get into the book, which is a shame, because the premise was interesting to me. But between long periods where the plot stood still, lack of development of characters and some descriptions that were well, questionable and not needed in the book at all. And I mean it - There was one description in the book of a characters inner thoughts that almost made me give up completely. If I hadn't paid money for the book, I would have. In the end, this wasn't a good book.
The book didn't come...more
The book didn't come...more
Plenty of things happened in this tale of the New Zealand gold rush, what with blue blancmanges, 19th century rentboys and fossicking. Lots and lots of fossicking. (Love that word: totally innocent but it sounds as if it ought to mean something rude).
Why, then, did it feel so slow?
It can’t be denied that this author has a way with words. She created the atmosphere of time and place beautifully and with great attention to detail. The aims, thoughts and feelings of her characters were rendered so...more
Why, then, did it feel so slow?
It can’t be denied that this author has a way with words. She created the atmosphere of time and place beautifully and with great attention to detail. The aims, thoughts and feelings of her characters were rendered so...more
This book was about a woman who moved with her new husband to New Zealand from England sometime at the turn of the century (or earlier). It deals with the woman, Harriet, her struggles with her new marriage, her struggles with settling on frontier land, and finally deals with the desire of her husband to find gold. Who knew there was even a goldrush in New Zealand?? I never even gave it a thought until now. The gold rush parts are very interesting and historically eye opening. Harriet is a very...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I didn't even know they had a gold rush in New Zealand, but apparently they did in the mid-nineteenth century, and this is the setting for The Colour.
The story follows a newly married couple who emigrate to New Zealand from Norfolk to start a new life. Dissatisfied with their humble existence, the husband becomes obsessed with gold, and sets off alone for the newly discovered southern gold fields, leaving his wife and mother behind to fend for themselves.
I've enjoyed Rose Tremain's other books,...more
The story follows a newly married couple who emigrate to New Zealand from Norfolk to start a new life. Dissatisfied with their humble existence, the husband becomes obsessed with gold, and sets off alone for the newly discovered southern gold fields, leaving his wife and mother behind to fend for themselves.
I've enjoyed Rose Tremain's other books,...more
A story of a grub of a man moving to New Zealand with a proper person of a wife, and never being satisfied. Be it by his Mother, his wife, his home, his work, or gold, or resolution. A really great book, compelling even when describing grinding work, throat clutching sadness or exhausting inevitables. You're in its world from the off, and there's enough clues to let you know where it's going, but the end is still rewarding.
The message I got from this book is that the permanently dissatisfied ar...more
The message I got from this book is that the permanently dissatisfied ar...more
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Rose Tremain is the author of fifteen works of fiction, including The Road Home, winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, and Restoration, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She lives in Norfolk and north London.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Tre...
More about Rose Tremain...
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