Guardian Review
"It was curiosity, as much as anything else, that made me let events take their course," says the narrator of Kate Grenville's skilful ninth novel. Curiosity undoes Elizabeth on Midsummer night in 1788, when this Devon lass falls prey to the charms of a soldier. So she is married to John Macarthur and, not long after their son is born, he accepts a posting to New South Wales. Macarthur, a real historical figure, is regarded as the founder of Australia's wool industry; Grenville gives voice to his wife Elizabeth, who was as responsible as he for its development. A Room Made of Leaves shows a woman making her way in the world - and making the best of a bad situation. "Mr Macarthur blazed inside with something restless," Elizabeth confides, "something dark and acidic." She must survive his darkness, as well as the long voyage to the other side of the globe and life on starvation rations in the earliest days of the Australian colony. Along the way, the reader comes to understand that the curiosity which first got Elizabeth into trouble may well be the saving of her. Salvation arrives in the form of William Dawes, surveyor, astronomer and mapmaker. Grenville's imagination brings Dawes and Elizabeth together in the title's "room made of leaves", a hidden bower of erotic and scientific adventure. Longing for intellectual stimulation, she persuades Dawes to teach her about the stars; these two lonely people find a layered, moving companionship. Back at the farm, Elizabeth can bring her increasing intellectual confidence to bear on the breeding of sheep. And it is through Dawes that Elizabeth comes to understand that the land on which her sheep graze does not belong to her, or to any European. This is an engaging book; the structure episodic, as befits its diary form. It is dedicated "to all those whose stories have been silenced" - not only women such as Elizabeth Macarthur, but the Indigenous people of Australia, too. "I can see no way to put right all the wrongs," Elizabeth tells us. At least, however, "I am prepared to look in the eye what we have done." That is the end of this novel, but it is also a kind of beginning.
Booklist Review
It is 1790, and Elizabeth Veale is accompanying her new husband, John Macarthur, to the recently established penal colony in Sydney. This bleak, violent, and unforgiving environment is rife with possibilities for such a vindictive, petty, and blatantly ambitious man. Theirs is a loveless marriage, the result of an unwanted pregnancy, and in this remote land far from their native Britain, John controls Elizabeth's life with an iron fist. Yet as Elizabeth witnesses John's increasingly self-serving schemes, she learns how to manipulate his vanity and insecurities to fashion a tolerable existence within intolerable circumstances. History credits John Macarthur as the founder of Australia's wool industry, although there is evidence that Elizabeth was the key to its actual success. Little, however, is known about one of the country's founding families. Esteemed Australian writer Grenville fills the gap by imagining the discovery of a secret memoir chronicling Elizabeth's passage from abandoned child to abused wife to unacknowledged businesswoman, using this cunning device to explore the rich, unlimited interplay between what is known and what can only be suspected. In her rich vision of an alternate life for Elizabeth, buoyed by quotes from Elizabeth's actual writings, Grenville offers a potentially myth-busting version of a turbulent time.
