Tag Archives: Australian settlers

#BookReview ‘Devotion’ by @HannahFKent #historical #emigration

5 Replies

In Prussia, 1836, fourteen-year-old Hanne lives in a world-within-a-world, a strict religious group where worship must be kept secret and hidden from the sight of neighbours. Devotion by Hannah Kent is the story of Hanne’s persecuted community. They live in fear of expulsion or worse. But when a new family arrives Hanne meets another outsider, Thea, and her life is changed forever. Hannah Kent Kent takes her time with the first half. This is a slow start, a painstaking building of the relationship between Hanne and Thea, drawing the world in which neither fits. As Hanne reaches womanhood, her life is changing in small ways. Her mother increasingly separates her from twin brother Matthias as they are prepared for different adult lives. Hanne simply longs to be free to be in the woods, to listen to the sounds of nature alive. But in times of fear or uncertainty, when she bristles against the strict confines set by her mother, the unshakeable belief of her father, she cleaves to her twin. The glimpse of a different world offered by Thea’s family, the more open way they behave with each other, makes Hanne’s mild dissatisfaction with her life become an acute fear of being trapped.
When the offer of safe passage to Australia comes from a helpful member of their congregation, a new life where they will be able to worship without fear becomes possible. ‘Without my father’s devotion to that Bible I would not be here. Without that Bible, nothing would have happened.’
The story is told in three parts, or ‘days’, and the event occurring at the end of the first day is perhaps not surprising but what follows is. To explain, is to tell too much of the plot. The second part, when the travellers settle in the Adelaide Hills, is slow paced. After the sections in Prussia and onboard ship, the indulgence of the writing in what is already a slow-paced novel begins to drag a little.
Kent’s writing is strongest when describing Hanne’s visceral connections with land and sea, with nature, with animals. She seems to directly commune with living creatures, to hear their voices. There is a magical element – magic or witchcraft – threaded throughout the story which is both a benefit and a curse, a source of division within the Lutherans but a form of communication with the native Peramangk community who live on the land the Lutherans claim for their settlement of Heiligendorf.
The theme of devotion, and love, runs throughout. The love shared by Hanne and Thea, but also Hanne’s love for her brother, her friend Hans and her parents. The devotion both to their shared faith and to each other. It is Hanne alone who feels the connection to nature and her devotion to every living creature, and this sets her apart.
At times the beautiful prose dominates the storyline and I lost track of the moment where the action paused. I admit to skipping chunks. No matter the beauty, the tenderness of the writing, a strong narrative is essential to stop the reader floundering and continue reading.
Basically, this is a love story, of love unobtainable and out of reach, but a love all-consuming.

Read my reviews of Hannah Kent’s two other novels:-
BURIAL RITES
THE GOOD PEOPLE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue
‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘The Ninth Child’ by Sally Magnusson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEVOTION by @HannahFKent https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5wS via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ by Kate Grenville #historical

1 Reply

When she is 21, a moment’s dalliance in a bush forces orphan Elizabeth to marry soldier John Macarthur. The story of their marriage in 1788, journey to the colony of Australia on board a convict ship and life in the new settlement called Sydney Town, is told in A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville. Kate GrenvilleElizabeth was a real woman but little is known of her, though her husband features in Australia’s history books as the British army officer who became a politician, legislator and pioneer of the Australian wool industry. Grenville is free to imagine what life must have been like as a white settler, and a woman, in a rough, uncultured town where the native people are viewed as animals.
Very quickly Elizabeth finds her new husband is a bully and her new home is a brutal, unforgiving, judgmental place. She spends much time alone with her sickly son and survives by disguising how clever she is, particularly from her husband. More children quickly follow and she bonds more with the convicts who work for her as servants, than she does with the wives of her husband’s friends. An outlier, she decides to improve her learning and seeks lessons on astronomy from an officer in her husband’s corps. What follows changes her understanding of her new country and her place in it.
The pacing seems at times off kilter, a trifle slow in places and rushed at the end, but the writing is as beautiful as I remember from Grenville’s earlier books. Of the book’s two halves, I wanted less of the first half and more of the second about Elizabeth’s role in developing breeds of sheep suited to the wool trade.
Essentially this is a delicately-written story of a young woman who, after making one mistake, is trapped in a loveless marriage far away from her Devon home. She learns how to manage her husband without him realising he is being managed, she tempers his outbursts and steers him out of trouble. Perhaps this fictional account of Elizabeth’s life will mean more to Australians who have grown-up with the historical story of the real John Macarthur.
A good read but not my favourite Grenville book.

Read my review of another Kate Grenville book, RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER.

If you like this, try:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Pearl Sister’ by Lucinda Riley
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES by Kate Grenville https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5jI via @SandraDanby