This is one of the best books I read by Patricia Shaw. The cast of both white and blackfellers is manageable, and the plot is impressive. The big boss who built up the station knows everything and understands everyone. Except his sons. The genuine one wasn't made for politics, and the selfish one too unpredictable for even that job. Some people get their just rewards in the end though. But only some. This is one of those books you think about for quite a while.
Like several of Patricia Shaw's books this one seems to portray several plots running in parallel, and for a long time one is never sure who the main character is. Set in the 1830s, the novel follows the fate of men holding on the wreckage of their lives in Hobart and the Port Arthur Penitentiary in Tasmania. And whereas the most of the story rings true, not everything is believable. Yes, I know there have been honourable administrators, and innocent people have been transported, but I very much doubt they ever met. But like most stories I read about Transportation this one turned out to be another gut wrencher.
But then, even Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, which is a historian's account on the subject of the convict settlement of Australia, Tasmania and the Norfolk Islands, based on fascinating research in the UK and down under, and which first kindled my interest in the subject, can make you angry.
On Emerald Downs was the thrilling title which led me to but more of Patricia Shaw's writings. Especially memorable, even months later, is the story of Diamond, an aborigine girl in River of the Sun and Fires of Fortune.
Bill Bryson's Shakespeare teaches things I didn't know in an entertaining way. 'twould be an eye opener for those enforcing copyright these days, as Shakespeare must have - in accordance with his contemporaries - made liberal use of other people's intellectual property quite unashamedly. Despite this Shakespeare created and introduced a legacy of countless new words, including the word countless and more than 800 others still in use today. Few writers these days have even a single word to their name. Shakespeare not only created words by the mile, he's also responsible for many sayings and phrases still in use. Although we know a lot about his professional life, very little is known about the man as a person. Bill Bryson's delightfully changes this a little. I now know that the man left his second best bed to his wife.
Because there is so very little known about the period we don't even know if King Arthur ever existed. So it's just a story, as Helen Hollick points out herself. But what a story! It differs so much from Bernard Cornwell's Arthur Books, yet it's similarly gripping, exciting, and touching. I've decided I want to know more about this period.
The third book in the series sees a more than usually disturbed Captain Rennie, sometimes grasping events as if he'd never been off colour, but most of the time he appears to be a character who lives "beside his shoes". I normally don't give a damn about quotes from the media, but some printed on the back of the title are really very far fetched. Despite this I will continue to read the series because it so out of character for historic fiction about the Napoleonic wars.
© Copyright 1998 - 2008 Klaus Schallhorn.