Sarah Thornhill

Thornhill Family #3

by Kate Grenville

Sarah and Jack have never doubted that they are made for each other.

But there is someone in Sarah's family who will not tolerate the relationship.

The reason lies in both the past and the present, and it will take Sarah across an ocean to a place she never imagined she would be.

Kate Grenville takes us back to the Australia of The Secret River in this novel about love, tangled histories and how it matters to keep stories alive.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Australia, Historical, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works are the international best-seller The Secret River, The Idea of Perfection, The Lieutenant and Lilian's Story (details about all Kate Grenville's books are elsewhere on this site). 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.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a miss on this one. I loved the first book in the series so much that I was excited to read this one. First one had a lot of drama and a perspective from the author’s voice. It gave us a view of the colonization in Australia through the eyes of the colonizers. But in this case, there was only a little drama in the Thornhill family. It was a slow set up in part one with a lot of promise, but it went nowhere.

I accidentally read the final book in the series before the middle one. Now I’m not sure I want to read the middle one…

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third novel of Grenville’s trilogy set in the colony of New South Wales and links directly back to the first of those novels, The Secret River. Sarah Thornhill is the narrator. The youngest daughter of the wealthy emancipated convict William Thornhill, she had not been born when her father participated in a massacre of local indigenous people near their settlement on the Hawkesbury River. Ignorant of her father’s past, Sarah falls in love with her brother’s friend, Jack Langland, the son of a white father and an indigenous mother. However, Sarah’s father’s secret will have a devastating effect on her life.

As she did in The Secret River, Grenville sensitively explores the difficult relationship between white settlers and the indigenous inhabitants in early 19th century New South Wales. She does not presume to tell the story from the point of view of the indigenous people, for that is not her story to tell. However, Grenville captures the colonial experience and, in telling Sarah’s story, particularly evokes the experiences of the first generation of those born to emancipated convicts - the so-called “currency lads and lasses” - who were looked down upon by free settlers and, unlike their parents, had nowhere other than the colony to think of as home.

At its heart, Grenville’s work focuses on how to deal with guilt, grief and loss, as Sarah strives to come to terms with the loss of her first love and the discovery of her father’s guilt. Her descriptions of the country in which the Thornhill family lives on the Hawkesbury River is evocative. This is what that area looks like, much the same today as it looked two hundred years ago.



Grenville’s portrayal of the life Sarah lives on the “frontier” – an area around the upper Hunter Valley – is equally evocative. This section of the novel was particularly meaningful for me, as I have ancestors – an emancipated Irish convict and his wife – who settled not far away. He was killed by a lightening strike in the 1850s while ploughing his land, leaving an illiterate wife and five young children to fend for themselves. As a woman who has always lived in the city, I am remote from the world in which my ancestors lived, and I found myself moved by Grenville’s portrayal of that world, with its underlying reality of inter-racial conflict.

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While reading Sarah Thornhill’s story was generally a positive experience, this novel is not in the same league as The Secret River. It lacks the raw power and dramatic conflict of that work. In addition, although Grenville does a good job in giving Sarah a voice, she uses a stylistic device which becomes distracting - the use of sentence fragments rather than full sentences. While this reflects the laconic speech pattern of the Australian rural class, it’s overdone and makes all of the characters sound the same. Still, notwithstanding its weaknesses, I needed to read this novel. Grenville’s work is an important contribution to understanding and coming to terms with the Australian colonial experience and should be read by everyone whose family history ties them to this country. This is so even if I can’t rate this particular novel at more than 3-1/2 stars.

[Karen Charlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been a huge fan of Kate Grenville’s ‘The Secret River’ for years, and I was really looking forward to reading more about the Thornhill family. However, I have to confess that that I was very disappointed with ‘Sarah Thornhill.’

In my opinion, the better story would have been that of the adopted Maori granddaughter who was brought to the Thornhill household. Yet, Rachel is never anything more than a token character in the book and I got the sense that Grenville took the easy way out by focussing on the life of Sarah, instead.

The book starts well enough and Grenville’s skill as a writer shines through. I quickly became enthralled by the continuing struggle of the early settlers to carve out their lives in the harsh but stunningly beautiful, Australian outback.

Sarah starts as a strong and fascinating character (albeit illiterate) with a distinctive voice of her own:

‘They called us the Colony of New South Wales. I never liked that. We wasn’t new anything. We was ourselves.’

In her mid-teens, Sarah falls passionately in love with a Jack Langland, the mixed race son of a neighbour. She enjoys a wonderful sexual relationship with him under the nose of her family, who seem to have an ambivalent (and not wholly convincing) attitude to the blacks. They refuse to sanction the inter-racial marriage of the young lovers, who are torn apart, yet welcomed Jack into their house in the first place and adopted the mixed race daughter of their dead son.

Sadly, this is where the book began to go downhill for me. Sarah and Jack are not Cathy and Heathcliff, or Romeo and Juliet; I felt they gave up the fight for each other very quickly.
It then became apparent that this novel sacrifices realistic character development in order to concentrate on the wider issue of the brutality and cruelty of the white settlers towards the indigenous black populations of New Zealand and Australia. Yes, this is a story which needs telling – and Grenville cleverly accomplished this in her previous book, ‘The Secret River,’ which shows the cruelty but wonderful fallible humanity of a memorable cast of characters.

Unfortunately, ‘Sarah Thornhill’ degenerates into a novel dominated by Sarah’s need to atone for the sins of her father. This is not a theme I am ever comfortable with. Realistic character development and plot were sacrificed for this wider political message to the Australian public. The ending was particularly disappointing and very frustrating.

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sequel to 'The secret river' and it is worth reading the first book in order to appreciate this one fully. Sarah Thornhill is a willful and strong character and it was moving to see her evolve in a colonists' family who struggle to hide the atrocities perpetrated on the natives in the past as well their inadequate, ambiguous and racist attitude towards them during Sarah's upbringing and coming of age. Through the eyes of this young woman, the life of colonialists in Australia come vividly to life and when she falls in love with a 'half darkie', she painfully experiences the truth about how her family feel about their native neighbors. It's the 19th century and many decades of intolerance and hardship will still follow before there is any change of mind, a feeling of remorse or even an acknowledgment for the wrongs that had been inflicted on the local population. Kate Grenville pays a beautiful tribute to the Aborigine people by having written these books.

[Sue Gerhardt Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is there anything finer than reading Australian Historical Fiction? To gain an understanding of what life was like for the convicts, the appalling treatment of the aborigines, the British colonization of New South Wales and the colonization of Australia involves reading books such as these, tragic but crucial. I can’t get enough of these types of books and I read them with gusto. My fascination with the history of early Australia became an interest of mine when I first read Patricia Shaw’s historical fiction novels eight years ago and during my journey into citizenship and the reading of Our Common Bond (the section of Australia and its people) I felt even more drawn to this subject matter.

The conclusion to Kate Grenville’s trilogy was brilliant. I gobbled it up within a couple of days.
Brave, uneducated Sarah Thornhill is the heroine in this absorbing and haunting novel. A beautiful kind of love story. This tale is set along the gorgeous Hawkesbury River and Kate Grenville provides the reader with magnificent scenery descriptions. We recently visited this beautiful location and are lucky enough to have friends who live not too far from the Hawkesbury Region.

Great book! Highly recommended!

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meaningful story of how we carry the history of our forefathers with us, of shame and hidden crimes, of truth setting one free, of courage to live your life as honestly as you can. This book was hard to put down. What a great read.

[nettebuecherkiste · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sequel to "Secret River" is okayish, but less convincing in representing settlers' life in 19th century Australia and the atrocities commited against the Aborigines.

New South Wales, Australien, im 19. Jahrhundert. Sarah ist die jüngste Tochter des ehemaligen Sträflings William Thornfield und Protagonisten aus „Secret River“. Die Familie lebt in einem bescheidenen Wohlstand, doch Sarah ahnt nicht, was ihr Vater getan hat, um diesen Wohlstand zu erreichen. Als Jugendliche verliebt sich Sarah in den Halb-Aborigine Jack, doch die junge Liebe steht unter schlechten Zeichen.

Ich hatte sehr befürchtet, dass diese Fortsetzung von „Secret River“, das mir gut gefallen hat, sich als kitschiger und überdramatisierter Liebesroman entpuppen würde. Doch glücklicherweise ist sie das nicht. Ja, es geht zunächst viel um die Liebe, doch der Schwerpunkt des Romans verlagert sich in seinem Verlauf. Mir gefiel nicht so sehr, dass dieser Roman sich sehr auf seine Protagonistin konzentriert, doch auch diesbezüglich ändert sich das Buch etwa ab der Hälfte – nun wird wie in „Secret River“ das Unrecht thematisiert, das den Aborigines angetan wurde. Kate Grenville gelingt dies allerdings weniger überzeugend als im ersten Roman, auch die Auflösung am Ende ließ mich eher kalt. Sarahs Jammereien um ihre frühere Liebe sind etwas nervig.

Am meisten interessiert haben mich an dem Buch die Beschreibungen von Australien im 19. Jahrhundert, die allerdings nicht so viel Platz einnehmen wie in Buch 1.

Das Buch liest sich sehr gut und schnell, die Sprache ist einfach. Sarah fungiert als Ich-Erzählerin, sie kann weder lesen noch schreiben und drückt sich auch sehr einfach aus. Dies ist ein weiterer Kritikpunkt, den ich habe, eine Erzählweise in der dritten Person mit einer etwas ausgefeilteren Sprache hätte dem Buch sicher gut getan. Den Dialekt bzw. die einfache Sprechweise hätte man immer noch in den Dialogen darstellen können.

Eine Fortsetzung, die sich gut liest, aber nicht an ihren Vorgänger heranreicht. Ganz nett, aber nicht mehr.

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing sequel to the author's The Secret River. Grenville's inhabiting of her illiterate narrator is convincing; as is her depiction of the class differences that Australians are/were obsessed with.

[Pa] was almost shy of his own daughter, now that she was Mrs Archibald Campbell. When Archibald said something one day about a tutor for the child when the time came, Pa went quiet. You can wish for too much, I thought. You can want so much, you lose your own children and grandchildren. (p.164)

The novel struck me as most true in its observations about belonging and not belonging--what it takes, what it feels like, how you know when you don't. "I might of thought I had the measure of these people I shared my life with," the narrator says, but when she spends an evening listening to the three Irish in her household play and sing,

I was the only one dry-eyed. That was what it was to belong to a place. To be brought undone by the music of the land where you'd been born. The loss as sharp a pain as mourning a lover. Us currency lads and lasses [=born in the colony] had no feeling like that about the land we called ours. It had no voice that we could hear, no song we could sing. Nothing but a blank where the past was. Emptiness, like a closed room, at our backs. (p.197)

Perhaps that's why some of us went off searching for a place that would have us anyway, even though we weren't from there.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

No doubt it will come as a strange observation to make about an experienced author’s work, and it’s not the way I expected to respond to a book by one of my all-time favourite novelists, but Kate Grenville’s latest book, Sarah Thornhill, reads a bit like a debut novel. It comes with too strong a sense of a writer needing to get something off her chest, and the plot goes quite awry, especially at the end.

So what went wrong?

Well, firstly, there is much that went right. I read this novel straight through in four hours not willing to put it down. Kate Grenville writes beautifully, evoking the era with great skill and authenticity. She is a master of characterisation and her settings are superb. The voice of Sarah as narrator and central character is honest and true, and Grenville’s rendition of the idiom of an uneducated but intelligent woman was completely convincing.

Sarah Thornhill has its genesis in Kate Grenville’s own family history, and it’s the story of William Thornhill’s daughter. His transition from convict to colonist formed the basis of The Secret River, one of my all-time favourite books. (I read it before I started this blog, so there is no review of it here). Like The Secret River this novel is set along the Hawkesbury River during the period when the indigenous people were being displaced and dispersed, so the story is a catalyst for exploring the moral ambiguities of European settlement: a great opportunity for the poor and dispossessed of Britain, achieved at the expense of the original owners of the land.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/03/25/sa...

[Gwendolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Thornhill is a satisfying ending to Kate Grenville's trilogy about the colonization of Australia by British prisoners. The story began in The Secret River (short-listed for the Booker Prize) with William Thornhill's deportation to New South Wales and continued in The Lieutenant with Daniel Rooke's quest to understand the foreign land he is ordered to colonize and civilize. Sarah Thornhill returns to the Thornhill family, now a prosperous family with little connection to their crude beginnings in the colony. Sarah is William's daughter, and she falls in love with a man who is half-colonist and half-native, sparking a collision of the two separate worlds that have existed side-by-side in apparent harmony. The Secret River is the strongest of the trilogy, but I enjoyed watching the history of New South Wales evolve over three books from a primitive prison colony to a well-established society. The romance between Sarah and Jack in the final book of this trilogy is a cliché, but it is also a useful device to explore the hidden racial tensions. Sarah's first-person narrative ends on a high point, giving hope that mistakes of the past can be overcome by good intentions in the present.

If you have not read any of the other books in this trilogy, I would recommend starting with The Secret River. The other two novels can certainly be read as stand-alone pieces, but I think The Secret River is the best way to start because it lays out the earliest days of the colonization of New South Wales. Also, The Secret River is probably the strongest of the three novels from a literary perspective.

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely love how Kate Grenville can describe a scene and paint a picture with words that make me want to read it over and over to commit it to memory. Maybe it is just me, but I can feel the heat bouncing off the rocks and the dry wind fluttering the leaves on the trees:

“Along from the house was a piece of rising ground, grass and scattered trees, and at the top a cluster of boulders, one just the right shape for your backside. When the day’s work was done I’d walk up and take a breather.

It was a lovely spot in the last of the sunlight, every rock and tree a long straight shadow. The trees up to their knees in grass, the trunks with streaks like watered silk, lemon-yellow and dove-grey, leaves a soft green that was halfway to blue. The hills all velvety folds, the mountains changing shape as the light faded.”

From the first pages, I felt that the story of Sarah Thornhill was going to be sad and it was. There was an overwhelming sense of expectation that what she wanted, she was never going to get. I did not want to believe it. I wanted the author to show me that I was wrong. What happens in this story is compelling. It lays out a family history of a dark secret. Something happened, long before the events in this story take place, but it left a lasting stigma on the people that had been affected and on the lives of their children.

I felt a profound sense of closure that I think the author wanted me to feel, for the strong woman in this story.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars for this from me. I enjoyed it, the third in the trilogy that started with The Secret River and followed on with lives of the Thornhill family and the interaction between white settlers and native Australians. It suffered a little by being the next book I read after an exceptionally well-crafted book so I took a little while longer than normal to drum up much interest in it, but once I did, I wanted to keep reading to know what happened.

Interestingly enough, one of the themes in the book I read immediately before this was about telling people the stories of others who had suffered so that their deaths weren't in vain and this theme runs through this book in places also.

There were no quotation marks to indicate conversation and I initially thought that this would annoy me, but I didn't mind it or notice it too much - I think because it's told in the first person by Sarah (mostly called Dolly) and the conversation seems like she's just reporting it. What did bug me a bit was when she said "I would of gone...", rather than "I would have gone..."!

This trilogy has certainly made me think more about the things that went wrong between the white settlers and native Australian people and wonder how we could have done things better...

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kate, we need to have a chat. 'The Secret River' ignited my interest in Australian colonialism. Never thought I'd say those words, well done Ms Grenville.

The Secret River captured me with the onslaught of terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad deeds. Black and white, you spared no details; I was transfixed. Flies in the eyes and sand in my teeth, I ate up your every word. Awkward wrongings, cultures clashing, stories told.
I couldn't wait for your next book to come out, 'Sarah Thornhill'. Oh dear. Where was the meat and potatoes? Teenage histrionics with too many horses. Boring!

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Kate Grenville's "The Secret River," "The Lieutenant," and "The Idea of Perfection." I was anxious to read this one because it was the last of a trilogy beginning with "The Secret River." However, from the first page, I was disappointed. Where was the beautiful prose I so loved in Kate Grenville's other books? This was a book of half-formed sentences with no notable prose at all. Her other books made me want to BE there, STAY there; this book made me want to LEAVE.

It's difficult to believe the same person wrote this book. I was very disappointed.

[Sam Woodfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

This final novel in the trilogy by Kate Grenville follows Sarah Thornhill, the youngest member of the Thornhill family. Sarah, or Dolly as she is known to her family, is the daughter of an ex-convivt who has made a life for himself in the new territory in Australia. Sarah falls in love with a local boy who has a white father and native black mother, but a family secret kept quiet by the Thornhills for years will tear apart their relationship, and affect the course of Sarahs life forever, leaving her living with dark secrets that will consume her for the rest of her years, and lead her on a journey to correct the wrongs of the father.
The book is written in the first person from the view of Sarah herself, and normally in a novel this draws you in. With the twists in this tale and the secrets that are unearthed, I expected to become engrossed in the characters life and feel the pain that Sarah feels as her world, and everything she held as true, unravels. But I didn't - I felt nothin the whole way through this novel. I found myself looking on and completely not interested in what was going on and what would happen next. I didn't think the revelation was as devestating as the novel made out, and I didn't really understand the journey that Sarah takes to correct this. There was not one single character who interested me at all, and this is very unusual for me, particularly when written in the first-person which normally draws me in more.
I understand that this novel is part of a trilogy, and maybe for those that have read the previous 2 novels this makes more sense and has more interest, but I'm not sure this would be the case as I think it's the style of writting and the subject matter which let this novel down. I found the dialogue really difficult to follow, and had to re-read various conversations multiple times to really comprehend them, somthing which is never particularly interesting. I also think that the angle this book takes is all wrong. There were other characters who could tell this story who may have been more interesting. For example, Jack, the half White-half Native young man who steals Sarah' heart but is forced to leave as the family secret is revealed. Directly affected by the secret, he would have offered an interesting view. Or Rachel, the young girl who is bought to live with the family but doesn't speak and is forced into the White way of life - what were her thoughts and feelings at being dragged from her family?
So I think what this novel lacks is depth of view and perspective. Sarah's view is just one of many, and it is these others which would enrich this story and really add interest and creat emotion. Without this, the novel was a little ploddy and emotionless and Sarah's view a little childlike which didn't evolve even as she aged. I found it really disappointing and really had to slog on in order to finish this. It needed more and unfortunately this wasn't something which Grenville provided.

[Dale Harcombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half stars. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to read a book by Kate Grenville, except for her Writing book. I now feel I have been missing out. Even though I hadn’t read The Secret River it didn’t matter a bit as far as understanding the story and the characters of this one.
The writing is beautiful and the setting is evocatively conveyed. From the opening description of the Hawkesbury I loved this story, told in the voice of the uneducated Sarah Thornhill, otherwise known as Dolly. I fell in love with the simple way the story was told and was so absorbed in the story I didn’t even notice till I was a fair way in that there were no quotation marks. It reads so clearly they are not needed. It is the story of Sarah Thornhill and Jack Langland, who has a white father and an Aboriginal mother. It shows the feelings between Jack and Sarah, what draws them together and also what keeps them apart. The characters are portrayed so well you feel you are right there with them and also with John Daunt.
It certainly gives a picture of those early days and the situation between the white people and the Aboriginal people and the attitudes that existed. Not only does this novel give an unvarnished view of the past but I appreciated the sensitive way the sex scenes were handled. It gave the emotional response that showed what the experience meant to those concerned without the physical details. It suited the way the story was told and the voice of Sarah. Every time I had to put this book down I resented the fact that I couldn’t keep reading and couldn’t wait to get back to it. This is a gem that kept me mesmerised. Loved this cover too.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kate Grenville knows how to write a page turner and this wasn't a disappointing end to the trilogy in that respect. It goes over the same ground as before in respect of the colonists' appalling treatment of the aborigines, except this time the Maoris are included. We can't have too many reminders of the indignities and wrongs that were visited upon these people. It would have been 4 stars but I thought the ending was completely ridiculous, unbelievable and frankly just plain stupid. The book is written in the first person with no quotation marks so sometimes the flow was interrupted while I was working out who was saying what. My main complaint is the use of would of, could of, should of, might of. It might sound like that when people are speaking but surely for writing it should be, at the very least, would've, could've, should've, etc. It's so repetitive that it spoiled the reading for me. I've seen it before, usually used by US authors, but it's just so totally grammatically wrong that the pedant in me can't forgive it! I'm glad I read the trilogy but this is the weakest of the three books.

[Liza Perrat · Rating 4 out of 5]

As she did in the first book of this trilogy - The Secret River - Kate Grenville delves into her family history to recreate the past in Sarah Thornhill. Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the central character in The Secret River, who was shipped to Australia as a convict and eventually made a decent life for his family.
Sarah grows up in ignorant bliss of the troubles that took place between her father and the local Aboriginals, her eyes firmly set on the handsome Jack Langland. The lovers’ happy future seems certain, until Sarah’s father refuses to allow her to wed the half-black Jack.
Jack returns to sea and a devastated Sarah eventually marries Irish immigrant, John Daunt. The author sharply evokes the hardship of life on a new settlement, the marriage taking unexpected turns for both Sarah and the reader, and building to the heart-breaking moment when Sarah discovers the true reason for her father’s refusal of marriage to Jack.
The only very minor gripe I had was with the end of the story. Whilst Sarah’s journey to New Zealand, in an attempt to make amends for the sins of her family, worked for the story, it did not work too well for me in terms of character.
Despite this, I felt Kate Grenville captured the voice of the headstrong, passionate and illiterate Sarah perfectly. This is a tender portrait of a young woman caught up in the turbulent period of the birth of a nation and, coupled with the author’s stunning prose, I would highly recommend Sarah Thornhill.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The white colonists have pushed the original Aborigines to the fringes of society, poor and begging for food and clothing. We first meet Sarah Thornhill as a young girl, her father an ex-convict turned colonist and landowner and the amazing thing about this novel is that the words and what she feels is that of a young girl. As a teenager, the dialog and observations mature somewhat, and she falls in love with her brothers friend and seal hunting partner, but a boy who her stepmother does not consider suitable. There are secrets in her family, that as the youngest she does not know, another brother she never knew, and her and Jack are torn apart. She marries a Mr. Daunt, has a child, and learns to love the kindness of her new husband and matures. So does the prose, which becomes lush and descriptive, beautiful descriptions of the vegetation and the scenery that is the Australian outback. She finally learns the horrific secrets her family had been harboring and struggles to overcome the guilt this knowledge brings. This is an exploration of a young girl turning into a women as well as the part the white colonists had in marginalizing the original Aborigines and their culture. I found it to be profound, but wonderful as well.

[Annabel Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The youngest child of a man who was once a convict but is now a landowner, the title character grows up in a life of relative privilege. “Blacks” are at the edges of her world but their way of life is largely unknown to her, and she makes no connection between that world and the man she falls in love with, Jack Langland, the son of her father’s friend. But Jack’s mother was indigenous, and eventually Sarah realises that he will never be truly accepted in her world.

The novel is a coming-of-age story in which Sarah’s maturity is gained through her understanding of the true nature of the relationship between blacks and whites and the part her own family has played in this relationship.

Grenville has a real gift for characterisation and Sarah’s voice - intelligent and inquiring, though uneducated - never falters. Sarah Thornhill is beautifully written, distinctively Australian in its language and setting, and from the very first paragraph there is that sigh of relief that comes with being in the hands of a writer who is in full command of her material.

[Wendy Feltham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of Australia seems just as brutal and complex as the history of the USA. Kate Grenville and Peter Carey are my favorite Australian authors of historical fiction because they create living, breathing characters who confront issues of violence and racism in memorable stories. Kate Grenville has written a trilogy about the early development of Eastern Australia. I admired her writing about the founding of Sydney as a penal colony in The Lieutenant, and then about the cultural clashes between settlers and Aboriginal people in The Secret River. This final novel tells the story of Sarah Thornhill, the daughter of the reformed convict turned successful landowner introduced in The Secret River. Sarah Thornhill is written in a different voice, that of a bright young woman who is illiterate. The plot is compelling and fast-paced, filled with tragedy and also love, as Sarah learns about her family's terrible past. I highly recommend this trilogy to anyone who wants to begin to understand Australia.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sequel to The Secret River, Kate Grenville's Sarah Thornhill continues the Thornhill family's saga through a second
generation, when the murderous rampage Sarah Thornhill's father secretly participated in against the Australian Aborigines comes to haunt the young woman's life in several unexpected ways. Kate Grenville is a remarkable author with a very distinctive voice for her Australian characters. Her characters are complex and rich, and the stories she tells about their lives are utterly compelling. "I'm never going to be able to tell what it was all about....I can only tell what I know. Cruelties and crimes, miseries on every side. But of all the crimes done, the worst would be to let the story slip away."

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a disappointment compared to the 2 previous books in this loose trilogy "The Secret River" and "The Lieutenant", both of which I found masterly, restrained and moving. It reads more like a moderately well-written colonial romance. It lacks the presence and stories of the indigenous people who made the earlier works come to life. See also the comparison with "That Deadman Dance" which may have spoiled alternative versions of such stories for me. Have I also bought into the criticism that whites should not write indigenous history?

[Paquita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Easy enough read. Kept me in but only just. I can't believe I've just finished it, as it was kind of like 'so that's it'?! I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as The Secret River. Sarah's life story didn't really enthrall me and I kept wondering why she made the choices she did. Like the ending which I thought was an unnecessary risk.

[Allie Cresswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in one day but that doesn’t mean it was an easy or a lightweight read. As with many of this author’s books, the lyrical prose was breath-taking. She paints an extraordinarily vivid canvas of the Australian landscape. The narrative voice, too, was authentic and compelling. I found the use of ‘of’ in place of ‘have’ (‘I would of’ rather than ‘I would have’) jarring, but then many people make this substitution nowadays and I am sure the author intended it as a reminder that the narrator is a simple, unlettered girl.
What I find myself struggling with now that I have read and thought about this book, is the disconnect between the author’s underlying (and, in many places, not so underlying) message and the story she uses to explore it.
Her main theme is the need for stories, history and traditions to be told, re-told, kept alive. She believes that it is wrong to sweep history under the carpet or to let the narratives of peoples or of individuals to die out. Even - especially - if they are raw, uncomfortable or shameful. Of course she has the shocking treatment of indigenous peoples at the hands of white settlers in mind, as well as the rich culture of those indigenous peoples unfortunately threatened with dying into obscurity. There has recently been a popular groundswell in favour of removing statues of people now known to have profited from the slave trade. The military leaders of the Confederate armies, once celebrated, are now vilified. But in my view - and I think Kate Grenville will agree with me here - we need reminding of the past, the awful mistakes, the appalling mishandlings, the corruption and blindness that allowed history’s most dreadful and lamentable episodes to take place, so that we don’t allow them to happen again. We must keep alive the diverse and age-old cultural traditions of all ethnicities so that we can all benefit by their wisdom.
On the other hand, the story of this novel is that of a love affair between two people clearly destined to be together, soul mates from their earliest meeting, and how it is doomed by the dragging up of a past crime that had nothing to do with either of them, was not their fault, that they would never have endorsed and for which they were not to blame. The revealed secret that drives an irreparable wedge between the two lovers is indeed a dreadful and shameful one, and one which at least one of its perpetrators suffers daily remorse over. Was it appalling? Yes. Did he profit from it? Yes. But was he remorseful? Oh yes, clearly. Had he also suffered as a consequence? Yes. If he could turn back time and do things differently, would he? Emphatically, yes. But all that was HIS burden to bear, and the revelation of it broke the hearts of two innocent people.
In this way, the idea of it being better to hide SOME history becomes quite persuasive, acting counter to the thrust of the rest of the book.

[Jacm · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not as well known as it's predecessor, this story of the long-term aftermath of the tragedy depicted in The Secret River is gripping and heartbreaking in it's own way. There may be no massacre in it's pages but living with Sarah as she grapples with where her life of comfort and privilege comes from was just as powerful a journey.

At one point, Sarah describes herself as stuck between two countries - She doesn't belong to Britain like her parents generation (the is no where to 'go back' to) and yet while she feels connected to the land of her birth, she can not claim the generational link to the land she lives on as its First Nations people either. How is she to find a solution? Where does she fit? Why does she feel such guilt for the actions of other white settlers? Is it possible to gain redemption for the acts of her people?

[Mallory · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sarah Thornhill is...fine, I guess. It’s not as cinematic and daring as The Secret River, or as introspective and focused as The Lieutenant. In fact, I found it kind of vague, more interested in the romantic aspects of the plot than the themes of race relations and colonialism. The last fifty pages are reminiscent of the power that the first two books have, but I don't think they're worth having to get through the first 250 pages. I also hated the fact that this was written in first person; the first two books weren't, and the narration was so much better in those. In short, this book holds a passing resemblance to its predecessors but lacks the elements that made The Secret River and The Lieutenant so good, and so important.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like The Lieutenant , this novel was not as brutal or expansive as The Secret River ; it had more of a feeling of a 'love story' than the first two books of the trilogy. However, I was left in no doubt as to why Kate Grenville wrote this story - to illustrate that what is written about the past can also be about the present and its unfinished business. (p. 307) This is an important book about the history of colonial Australia and the mistakes made at the time in regard to the treatment of Aboriginal people - some of these mistakes continue to be made.

I was disappointed with the closing chapters of Sarah Thornhill; they lacked authenticity and conviction and prevented me from awarding the novel 4 stars.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think this grabbed me with quite the same power as The Secret River, nor nearly as much as Lilian's Story or Dark Places.

It felt quite gentle, despite quite violent content. But Grenville writes very well about women, they have depth of mind, body and soul. They stand up from the page and demand you listen to what they have to say.

[Christine Dobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't realise this was the last in a trilogy, so it can be read without having read the previous titles.
It is simply written so as to reflect Sarah's character, I imagine?
I wasn't convinced that towards the end she felt obliged to travel a long and arduous journey in order to atone for her departed father's sins.