Monday 21 May 2018

"Searching for the Secret River" by Kate Grenville

  "The Secret River" is one of my favourite all-time novels.  I will be leading a discussion on this book later in the month, so I just read "Searching for the Secret River", which is the story of Kate Grenville's inspiration, research, writing, and re-writing of this story.  It isn't often that you get a chance to learn about the author's writing process.  I found it interesting.
  The inspiration for "The Secret River' came from the Walk for Reconciliation on the Sydney bridge in Australia in 2000.  There were 250,000 people walking across the bridge, and Kate was one of them.  She was recalling the story that she had heard about her great-great-great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, who came to Australia on a ship of convicts from England, landing close to this spot. 
   In the crowd, she locked eyes with an Aboriginal woman.  She realized that this woman's ancestors likely also lived in this place.  She wondered what happened when Solomon Wiseman encountered Aboriginal people.
Kate Grenville
   Kate immediately began to search for information about the life of Solomon WisemanShe visited countless museums and libraries. Some in Australia and some in England. She interviewed dozens of people. She wrote pages and pages-binders and binders.  
  She had expected that she would end up with a biography of Solomon Wiseman, but realized that it would be very boring for the readers.  So she put the facts into a novel. And what a wonderful novel it is!  I'll talk about it on my next blog.

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