- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday Books (Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385490593
- ISBN-13: 978-0385490597
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.7 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,556,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A charming true-life romantic adventure about a pair of young British couples--one hundred fifty years apart--braving the exotic rigors of the Australian Outback
The Singing Line is a wondrous narrative that combines the historical adventure of Longitude or Endurance with the keen insights and rambling rhythms of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence.
One hundred sixty years ago, Charles Todd, an impecunious astronomer's assistant, was sitting in his prosperous relatives' drawing room in Oxford, England, telling them of his dreams. He wished to go to South Australia and seek his fortune in the wild colony as Government Astronomer and Superintendent of Telegraphs. What he did not mention was that he also intended to string a telegraph wire--"the singing line"--across the brutal Australian Outback, which no human had ever even crossed before. Charles despaired of only one thing: finding a wife willing to brave such hardship with him. Suddenly, twelve-year-old Alice, hiding beneath the chaise longue, piped up: "I will marry you, Mr. Todd, if no one else will." And seven years later, so she did.
Alice Thomson, a young, successful British journalist, decided to trace the paths taken by Charles and Alice Todd, her great-great-grandparents. These two intrepid souls had left the comforts of Victorian England to settle in South Australia, the most remote part of the British Empire in the 1840s. Charles's quest to connect the desolate continent with the rest of the world by stringing telegraph wire from south to north was an almost unimaginably difficult feat. Even today the journey is something of an ordeal, as Alice Thomson and her bemused and long-suffering husband, Edward, learned.
Thomson spins the fascinating tale of the Todds' adventures Down Under with wit and grace. Charles did in fact succeed in laying his "singing line" across the Outback, an astonishing feat requiring the peculiarly Victorian virtue of pluck. Alice, from a comfortable home, suddenly had to adapt to the life of a frontier wife in the oddest and most isolated place imaginable. Charles's implacable derring-do--his many expeditions and near-disasters--and Alice's equally brave attempts to re-create a proper British life in a land of dust, flies, kangaroos, and emus make for a tale equal parts charm and excitement.
The Singing Line is a wondrous narrative that combines the historical adventure of Longitude or Endurance with the keen insights and rambling rhythms of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence.
One hundred sixty years ago, Charles Todd, an impecunious astronomer's assistant, was sitting in his prosperous relatives' drawing room in Oxford, England, telling them of his dreams. He wished to go to South Australia and seek his fortune in the wild colony as Government Astronomer and Superintendent of Telegraphs. What he did not mention was that he also intended to string a telegraph wire--"the singing line"--across the brutal Australian Outback, which no human had ever even crossed before. Charles despaired of only one thing: finding a wife willing to brave such hardship with him. Suddenly, twelve-year-old Alice, hiding beneath the chaise longue, piped up: "I will marry you, Mr. Todd, if no one else will." And seven years later, so she did.
Alice Thomson, a young, successful British journalist, decided to trace the paths taken by Charles and Alice Todd, her great-great-grandparents. These two intrepid souls had left the comforts of Victorian England to settle in South Australia, the most remote part of the British Empire in the 1840s. Charles's quest to connect the desolate continent with the rest of the world by stringing telegraph wire from south to north was an almost unimaginably difficult feat. Even today the journey is something of an ordeal, as Alice Thomson and her bemused and long-suffering husband, Edward, learned.
Thomson spins the fascinating tale of the Todds' adventures Down Under with wit and grace. Charles did in fact succeed in laying his "singing line" across the Outback, an astonishing feat requiring the peculiarly Victorian virtue of pluck. Alice, from a comfortable home, suddenly had to adapt to the life of a frontier wife in the oddest and most isolated place imaginable. Charles's implacable derring-do--his many expeditions and near-disasters--and Alice's equally brave attempts to re-create a proper British life in a land of dust, flies, kangaroos, and emus make for a tale equal parts charm and excitement.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
The Singing Line is an excellent book. It's very well written and an interesting true story. Australians especially would enjoy it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Irritating
12 July 2000
Format:Hardcover
I bought this book because I am interested in the early explorers and travellers in to the Australian hinterland and because I was about to travel to some of the same areas the author had visited. I found the bits about Todd, the man who came to Australia to look at the stars and ended up connecting Australia to the outside world by a telegraph wire, quite interesting. Although I thought perhaps Alice Thomson was a bit confused as to whether the story was about Alice Todd (the great grandmother for whom she was named) or Charles Todd who laid the line. And I could see where she was coming from in trying to relate the story of her own travels with her husband in the same area and the Todds adventures. But again I'm not sure she pulled it off exactly. By exaggerating her own hardships, she underplayed the genuine difficulties the Todds endured and both stories lost credibility - for me, anyway. But what I really disliked about this book was its horrid comments about Australians and the way they live, in these so-called remote areas. She makes it sound as though one hour out of Adelaide she was alone in the world with people almost unrecognisable as human beings. Spare us the "don't come the raw prawn", "strewth cobber" cliches (which are always only used by the English, anyway). And I hope she feels ashamed at the way she treated people who went out of their way to help her, for a few cheap laughs. In great frustration (it was so nearly a good book) I eventually threw it on the campfire, unfinished, at Lake Eyre, halfway along the Singing Line.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Alice Thomson is Her Own Biggest Fan
25 April 2000
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was fortunate enough to have the chance to live in Melbourne Australia for more than three years. I have experienced large parts of the journey Alice and her husband undertake in their quest to better understand her ancestor's experiences in creating the first telegraph line across Australia.
I found the book to be very Alice Thomson-centric. She seems to glorify all aspects of her journey while continually placing Charles Todd higher and higher upon his pedestal. I was hoping she would rekindle some of my own memories of the Australia outback. However, Ms. Thomson invariably spends paragraph after paragraph describing her husband's illness or her own tiny adventures driving the Land Cruiser or walking around Coober Pedy. Her descriptions of the local towns and environs is terse, quick, and dull. I do not recommend this book to anyone except Alice Thomson and her immediate family.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Regrettable
7 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
An interesting effort by a distant, if not vague relation to an historically insignificant figure, albeit one from whom myths form with their customary accuracy. What bits of research and experience are fairly presented are harmed, in my view to no benefit, by gratuitous asides regarding her apparently long-suffering companion, family and (soon to be former?) friends. One must wonder what would have been the book had the author not worked for a newspaper, which one might suspect arranged its serialization gratis. The photos beg for the book guillotine.
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