Searching for the Secret River by Kate Grenville

Searching for the Secret River is a prosaic insight into the creation of Grenville's best-seller The Secret River, a delving portrait into a family history of convicts and chain-gangs, and the history of Australia as a penal colony. When authors reveal the mysterious structure of their work, such as Milan Kundera and Sue Woolfe recently, it begs the question, 'is the magic of creating a novel lost?' Well, here, partly. A much more tangible part of Searching for the Secret River is one woman's quest to find her roots. Grenville homes in on Soloman Wiseman, a distant ancestor, who arrived as a convict and later set up his own boating business. She follows him through bureaucracy, 18th century London and the trials of the many indigenous families he dispossessed. As her memoir progresses, she focuses more completely on the construction of her novel. This removes a little of the varnish from the creation process, portraying it as an act that anybody could commit armed with the right tools, and ultimately takes away the art of creation from the 'privileged few'. In general, Grenville's search is a charming investigation into history and her own nuances in writing a novel, but it somehow removes the possibilities around The Secret River, and almost, not quite but almost, robs the reader of their own interpretation. [CC Mapletoft]