Sarah Thornhill
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.60
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Sarah Thornhill for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.60, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
I was thrilled to find myself back beside the river I'd come to know so well in The Secret River. The power with which Kate Grenville's evokes places and people is so remarkable that I could remember the smell of the air there - and it was no surprise to discover that Sarah Thornhill's story is as gripping and illuminating as her father's was. --Diana Athill
Here is someone who can really write. --Peter Carey
A beautifully uplifting piece of fiction. --Independent
Here is someone who can really write. --Peter Carey
A beautifully uplifting piece of fiction. --Independent
Product Description
Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William Thornhill, convict-turned-landowner on the Hawkesbury River. Her stepmother calls her willful, but handsome Jack Langland loves her and she loves him. Me and Jack, she thinks, how could it go wrong? But there's an ugly secret in Sarah's family. That secret takes her into the darkness of the past, and across the ocean to the wild coasts of New Zealand. Among the strangers of that other place, she can begin to understand. Kate Grenville takes us back to the early Australia of The Secret River and the Thornhill family. This is Sarah's story. It's a story of love lost and found, tangled histories and how it matters to keep stories alive.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Australia has issues with the role and status of Aboriginal people. Much of the current bad situation is believed to have been set in train by previous poor decisions dating right back to the settlement by Europeans and to have been compounded by mistake after mistake. Kate Grenville has addressed this previously in The Secret River and The Lieutenant.
In Sarah Thornhill, Kate Grenville takes us one generation further forward. The young Sarah doesn't have memories of "home"; she is a member of the first generation of Europeans to know only Australia. This allows some of the initial charting and claim-staking by her parents to be ancient history. One of the intriguing aspects of Australian history is how much written detail there is of the convict and migrant generations whilst the relatively recent social history in Australia has been lost to the mists of time.
Thus, the young Sarah has to delve and dig to discover who she is; who her parents really are; and who her family is. Much of this is delivered through grudging whispers and insinuations in a society where neighbours are shunned and strangers receive a hostile reception. Sarah initially seeks solace in her encounters with Aboriginal families who wander across the Thornhill land - until her father puts her straight. Instead, she is sent off to marry a young Irish man whom she tries hard to love.
This is contrasted with the different relationship that European settlers forged with the Maori population in New Zealand - where the Maori culture was embraced and allowed to flourish. At least, that's the story; the reality may have been less rosy at times. Sarah is brought into a position where she has to consider her family relationships and ties in the light of discovering the truth about various family members. History tells us that her well meaning efforts are ultimately going to be in vain and this means that much of the novel is akin to watching an inevitable car crash.
Kate Grenville has tackled a difficult subject with considerable sensitivity. It lacks some of the immediacy of The Secret River but rediscovers some of the personal depth that was missing from The Lieutenant which felt, sometimes, rather too academic. Sarah Thornhill is not a perfect novel and the ending does feel a little contrived, but it is nevertheless very moving. The novel is written in an accessible style with complex characterisation; the tone is non-judgemental; the focus is seldom on how past events occurred - much more on what people are going to do given the position they find themselves in. In doing this, it doesn't feel as though Grenville is preaching and she doesn't offer easy answers.
In Sarah Thornhill, Kate Grenville takes us one generation further forward. The young Sarah doesn't have memories of "home"; she is a member of the first generation of Europeans to know only Australia. This allows some of the initial charting and claim-staking by her parents to be ancient history. One of the intriguing aspects of Australian history is how much written detail there is of the convict and migrant generations whilst the relatively recent social history in Australia has been lost to the mists of time.
Thus, the young Sarah has to delve and dig to discover who she is; who her parents really are; and who her family is. Much of this is delivered through grudging whispers and insinuations in a society where neighbours are shunned and strangers receive a hostile reception. Sarah initially seeks solace in her encounters with Aboriginal families who wander across the Thornhill land - until her father puts her straight. Instead, she is sent off to marry a young Irish man whom she tries hard to love.
This is contrasted with the different relationship that European settlers forged with the Maori population in New Zealand - where the Maori culture was embraced and allowed to flourish. At least, that's the story; the reality may have been less rosy at times. Sarah is brought into a position where she has to consider her family relationships and ties in the light of discovering the truth about various family members. History tells us that her well meaning efforts are ultimately going to be in vain and this means that much of the novel is akin to watching an inevitable car crash.
Kate Grenville has tackled a difficult subject with considerable sensitivity. It lacks some of the immediacy of The Secret River but rediscovers some of the personal depth that was missing from The Lieutenant which felt, sometimes, rather too academic. Sarah Thornhill is not a perfect novel and the ending does feel a little contrived, but it is nevertheless very moving. The novel is written in an accessible style with complex characterisation; the tone is non-judgemental; the focus is seldom on how past events occurred - much more on what people are going to do given the position they find themselves in. In doing this, it doesn't feel as though Grenville is preaching and she doesn't offer easy answers.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed the book very much the characters were totally believable. I felt I was in there with Sarah I particularly liked Sarah's father.This is the second book I have read from this author.I would certainly read more of her novels.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
`Nothing ever gone, just you got to know where to look.'
12 Sep 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the figure at the centre of `The Secret River'. William was a transported convict, now `an old colonist' who has a family, land along the magnificent Hawkesbury River, and money. No-one had settled this land before William, but even so, when he surveys his estate (on the last page of `The Secret River'): `He would not understand why it did not feel like triumph.' Readers of `The Secret River', knowing of the `affray' at Blackwood's will understand. But for much of Sarah's story, this event is an unknown part of the past.
Born in 1816, Sarah - called Dolly by her family - has played no part in the events of the past. Sarah's story is told in the first person. We learn of her life and her loves, and her illiteracy shapes the narrative in particular ways. New South Wales is home for Sarah and her generation: they cannot share their parent's nostalgia for Britain.
Sarah's first love is Jack Langland. Jack is the eldest son of Jack Langland, another settler, but not of Jack's wife: `Jack's mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead.' Jack is the best mate of Will, William's son, and is a well-known to, and liked by most members of, the Thornhill family. But events, assisted by Sarah's stepmother, conspire to separate Jack and Sarah.
After Sarah's brother, Will, drowns on a sealing expedition to New Zealand, Jack brings Will's half-Maori daughter to her grandfather. This is a pivotal and ultimately very unhappy event in Sarah's story and has echoes from William Thornhill's past.
Sarah marries an Irish settler, John Daunt, and moves with him to the edge of European settlement. This is the part of the story I enjoyed most: the growing bond between John and Sarah. Here Sarah's voice is strongest and her world comes to life.
`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.'
I didn't care for the end of the novel: while Sarah's journey to New Zealand makes its own form of sense for the story, it didn't work well for me in terms of the character. And it's hard for me to reconcile the following passage (beautiful as it is) with Sarah's illiteracy:
`How will I ever find a way to tell everything that brought me here? How I found myself in that place where the winter never stops blowing and nothing lies between the land and the ice at the bottom of the world but an ocean full of dark water? How tell the story of me and Jack Langland and a girl who only ever had someone else's name? Of those things left undone that we ought to have done, and those things done that we ought not to have done?
Rippling away into all those lives, down along the fathers and daughters and granddaughters. Generation after generation, the things joining us and the things cutting between us. All made by something done so long ago.'
This as a story about love, about family secrets, and about the hidden aspects of Australia's past. But I found that I did not care as much for Sarah's story as I did for William's. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is the unevenness of Sarah's voice, and another is the way the story ends. Although the three books are loosely linked as a trilogy, it isn't necessary to read `The Secret River' and `The Lieutenant' first.
I'd rate this book somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Born in 1816, Sarah - called Dolly by her family - has played no part in the events of the past. Sarah's story is told in the first person. We learn of her life and her loves, and her illiteracy shapes the narrative in particular ways. New South Wales is home for Sarah and her generation: they cannot share their parent's nostalgia for Britain.
Sarah's first love is Jack Langland. Jack is the eldest son of Jack Langland, another settler, but not of Jack's wife: `Jack's mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead.' Jack is the best mate of Will, William's son, and is a well-known to, and liked by most members of, the Thornhill family. But events, assisted by Sarah's stepmother, conspire to separate Jack and Sarah.
After Sarah's brother, Will, drowns on a sealing expedition to New Zealand, Jack brings Will's half-Maori daughter to her grandfather. This is a pivotal and ultimately very unhappy event in Sarah's story and has echoes from William Thornhill's past.
Sarah marries an Irish settler, John Daunt, and moves with him to the edge of European settlement. This is the part of the story I enjoyed most: the growing bond between John and Sarah. Here Sarah's voice is strongest and her world comes to life.
`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.'
I didn't care for the end of the novel: while Sarah's journey to New Zealand makes its own form of sense for the story, it didn't work well for me in terms of the character. And it's hard for me to reconcile the following passage (beautiful as it is) with Sarah's illiteracy:
`How will I ever find a way to tell everything that brought me here? How I found myself in that place where the winter never stops blowing and nothing lies between the land and the ice at the bottom of the world but an ocean full of dark water? How tell the story of me and Jack Langland and a girl who only ever had someone else's name? Of those things left undone that we ought to have done, and those things done that we ought not to have done?
Rippling away into all those lives, down along the fathers and daughters and granddaughters. Generation after generation, the things joining us and the things cutting between us. All made by something done so long ago.'
This as a story about love, about family secrets, and about the hidden aspects of Australia's past. But I found that I did not care as much for Sarah's story as I did for William's. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is the unevenness of Sarah's voice, and another is the way the story ends. Although the three books are loosely linked as a trilogy, it isn't necessary to read `The Secret River' and `The Lieutenant' first.
I'd rate this book somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Pete's Books
23 Nov 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
I absolutely loved The Secret River and The Idea of Perfection, and I enjoyed The Lieutenant, but this latest effort is my least liked novel from this writer. I was definitely disappointed with this follow-up to The Secret River. I enjoyed most of the first 1/3 of the text but it quickly became too much of a soap opera after that, and I doubt few men would enjoy reading it. I might be wrong, but I think it is geared for the light romance reader, just in time for Xmas 2011. Unfortunately, I thought it was a follow up to The Secret River that probably should have been avoided.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Too Little, Too Late
27 Mar 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Kate Grenville has always been a writer with the popular touch. THE IDEA OF PERFECTION, for instance, which won the Orange Prize for 2001, was a pleasingly awkward romance in a setting of small-town social comedy. But when she published THE SECRET RIVER in 2006, the first of her trilogy of novels about the first settlers in Australia, she found a truly epic scale that set the personal story of deported convict William Thornhill against the vast potential of the new land and the burgeoning problem of how to treat its aboriginal inhabitants. By narrowing her focus in THE LIEUTENANT (2008), set thirty years earlier, she was able to highlight the moral issues even more acutely; this book also contains a fascinating intellectual component describing the title character's study of the aboriginal language. With SARAH THORNHILL, a direct sequel to THE SECRET RIVER, Grenville moves forward thirty years. Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, now a prosperous landowner on the Hawkesbury River.
Grenville's popular touch is still there, and her powers of description are as good as ever. But the novel lacks either the scale or the intellect of its predecessors to give it bite. There seem to be too few words on the page, too little to chew on. The moral issues of the other books have receded into the background; scale and intellect give way to sentiment. For the first half of the book at least, there is little there but the troubled course of a young woman's romance. The narrative will delight many readers, no doubt, but those who were stirred by the grand themes of the other two novels are in for disappointment. This is Grenville lite.
Though to be fair, Grenville still maintains her interest in the shameful history of relations between the colonists and the native people. This shows now in two forms: the pathetic life of the virtual serfs living on odd jobs and handouts from the European farms, and the problem of mixed-race children. For this is a transitional time; the biracial couplings common in earlier years are no longer acceptable now that many settlers are bringing their wives out from Britain. Not acceptable, at least, in the social ascent that Thornhill would want for his daughter, and it troubles him that Sarah's first love is a young man of mixed race. This upward trajectory, which Sarah herself cares about very little, is not an easy one in any respect, however. It will take Sarah from relative comfort to a hardscrabble existence on a lonely sheep farm. It will also take her from a youthful idealism to a more realistic appreciation of the qualities which make for a solid marriage. It will reveal grim secrets from the past (though known to those who have read THE SECRET RIVER). These things combine to make the second half grittier and more interesting than its rather vapid opening.
The novel will end with an almost ritual act of atonement that is moving in its own right -- but also strangely irrelevant: in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and involving the wrong people. But when such harm has been done by one people to another, how can there be an adequate way to atone? Even in writing about it, there is no ending that is not too little, too late.
Grenville's popular touch is still there, and her powers of description are as good as ever. But the novel lacks either the scale or the intellect of its predecessors to give it bite. There seem to be too few words on the page, too little to chew on. The moral issues of the other books have receded into the background; scale and intellect give way to sentiment. For the first half of the book at least, there is little there but the troubled course of a young woman's romance. The narrative will delight many readers, no doubt, but those who were stirred by the grand themes of the other two novels are in for disappointment. This is Grenville lite.
Though to be fair, Grenville still maintains her interest in the shameful history of relations between the colonists and the native people. This shows now in two forms: the pathetic life of the virtual serfs living on odd jobs and handouts from the European farms, and the problem of mixed-race children. For this is a transitional time; the biracial couplings common in earlier years are no longer acceptable now that many settlers are bringing their wives out from Britain. Not acceptable, at least, in the social ascent that Thornhill would want for his daughter, and it troubles him that Sarah's first love is a young man of mixed race. This upward trajectory, which Sarah herself cares about very little, is not an easy one in any respect, however. It will take Sarah from relative comfort to a hardscrabble existence on a lonely sheep farm. It will also take her from a youthful idealism to a more realistic appreciation of the qualities which make for a solid marriage. It will reveal grim secrets from the past (though known to those who have read THE SECRET RIVER). These things combine to make the second half grittier and more interesting than its rather vapid opening.
The novel will end with an almost ritual act of atonement that is moving in its own right -- but also strangely irrelevant: in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and involving the wrong people. But when such harm has been done by one people to another, how can there be an adequate way to atone? Even in writing about it, there is no ending that is not too little, too late.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
