May 2020 Book, The Secret River

On his first night in New South Wales, in 1806, William Thornhill—Thames boatman, thief, banished convict—gazes despairingly into the forest outside his flimsy hut. A spear-wielding Aborigine appears before him, and his dejection turns to rage. All he has is his family—“those soft parcels of flesh,” sleeping behind him—and “the dirt under his bare feet, his small grip on this unknown place,” and he is not about to give them up to a naked black stranger. The Aborigine responds with equal vehemence: “Be off, be off!”

The episode shows, in miniature, the project of Grenville’s magnificent novel—an unflinching exploration of modern Australia’s origins. Like the settlers, we instinctively turn away from the ugly truths behind every cleared riverbank and every posted fence. But Grenville’s psychological acuity, and the sheer gorgeousness of her descriptions of the territory being fought over, pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another’s doom.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

March 2024 Book, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

Image
  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library.    In American Dialogue, Ellis divides four chapters into two parts each: Then and Now.  Each chapter focuses on what he identifies as four enduring issues that are more salient and challenging in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Ellis establishes the historical foundation for each subject and then examines the complexity of each in the context of a divisive political climate complicated by domestic and international obstacles.  Acknowledging that a true conversation with the founders is obviously impossible, he attempts to connect their concerns regarding these controversial topics with those of modern America. Hence, his use of the term dialogue in his title.  The four areas he identifies are race, equality, law, and foreign policy. In each case, Ellis chooses one member of the founding generation as the central figure with whom to engage...
Read more
Image
 Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. It's 1932, a time of hardship, adversity, and despair. Especially at the Lincoln Indian Training School, formerly a military outpost called Fort Sibley. It's a place where Indian children who have been taken from their families are sent so they can be educated in the ways of the white world. But it's really a place meant to obliterate every trace of their Indianness, by force if necessary. Odie O'Banion and his older brother Albert, orphans, are the only two white boys in the school. The opening pages describe their time in the school's quiet room, what used to be the military's solitary confinement cell. Odie tells the story from the viewpoint of his younger self: "The night was moonless, the tiny cell as black as pitch, our bed a thin matting of straw laid on the dirt floor, the door a great rectangle of rusted iron with a slot at the bottom for the de...
Read more

July 2024 book, The Color of Water

Image
  Talk About books meets every third Wednesday of the month at Guilford Free Library at 6:30. If the book of the month interests you, contact the library to reserve a copy and join in the discussion. In this memoir, James McBride tells the story of growing up as a son of his white, Jewish mother Ruth. Ruth was born in Poland and raised in Suffolk, Va, the daughter of an itinerant rabbi and a loving, disabled mother who spoke no English. At 17, Ruth fled the South, landed in Harlem, married a black man in 1941, founded a church, was twice widowed and raised 12 children in New York City. Despite hardship, poverty, and suffering, Ruth sent all 12 of her children to college. An astounding story of triumph over poverty and cruelty, through love, courage and determination. It leaves one to acknowledge that "truth can be stranger than fiction."
Read more