The Secret River tells the story
of William Thornhill, a boatman living in Dickensian poverty in London, who’s
transported to Sydney as a convict along with his family in 1806. In Australia,
still little more than a handful of convict townships and a lot of empty space,
he settles on a hundred acres of land he claims for his own, only to discover that
the indigenous people were there first, and they’re not moving. Thornhill’s
clash with “the blacks” miniaturises the contemporary global sweep of white
colonialism with crushing inevitability.
The novel is a gripping read,
containing some truly stunning descriptive passages and building real tension
and raw emotion. However, it verges on the simplistic, and its use of archaic
language is often awkward. The habit of putting dialogue into italics instead
of quotation marks is also just plain annoying. I would suggest that this book
thinks it’s a little cleverer than it really is, and I find myself wary of
texts about colonialism that gloss over the perspective of the indigenous
culture, as this does.
