Sarah Thornhill (2011) is a novel by Australian author Kate Grenville.[1] It is the sequel to the author's 2005 novel The Secret River.
 First edition | |
| Author | Kate Grenville |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | novel |
| Publisher | Text Publishing, Australia |
Publication date | 2011 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 307 |
| ISBN | 9781921758621 |
| Preceded by | The Lieutenant |
| Followed by | A Room Made of Leaves |
It won the 2012 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Fiction Book of the Year,[2] and was shortlisted for the 2012 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
Plot summary
editSarah Thornhill is the last child born to William and Sal Thornhill, whose struggle to establish a new life in Australia was told in the author's novel The Secret River. Sarah's mother is now dead and her father has re-married, who attempts to conceal and overcome her husband's convict past. But Sarah has a will of her own and falls in love with Jack Langland, a "half darkie", the product of a white father and an Aboriginal mother.
Notes
edit- Dedication: This novel is dedicated to the memory of Sophia Wiseman and Maryanne Wiseman, and their mother, 'Rugig'.
- Epigraph: "It does not follow that because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively no shape at all or an infinity of shapes." E. H. Carr.
Reviews
editBelinda McKeon in The Guardian noted: "It is with often marvellous vividness and clarity that Grenville evokes Sarah's world, from childhood on the Hawkesbury, through an adolescence of idealistic love, to a marriage towards which she goes with a resigned heart but of which she ultimately makes a fine hand."[3]
Delia Falconer in The Monthly found that "Like its predecessors, Sarah Thornhill will be welcomed by many readers as just the story we need now; others may prefer a less comforting, more ambiguous version of the past."[4]
Awards and nominations
edit- 2012 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Fiction Book of the Year[2]
- 2012 longlisted Miles Franklin Award
- 2012 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
- 2012 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2012 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award
- 2013 longlisted International Dublin Literary Award
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Austlit — Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville". Austlit. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
- ^ a b "Austlit — ABIA Australian General Fiction Book of the Year". Austlit. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
- ^ "Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville" by Belinda McKeon, The Guardian, 25 February 2012
- ^ "Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville" by Delia Falconer, The Monthly, September 2011