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Thornhill Family #2
The Lieutenant
Novel based on real life character William Dawes, a lieutenant in the Royal Marines on the First Fleet who arrived in New South Wales in 1788.
301 pages, hardback
First published December 31, 2007
273 people are currently reading
2869 people want to read
About the author
Kate Grenville
39 books840 followersKate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works are the international best-seller The Secret River, The Idea of Perfection, The Lieutenant and Lilian's Story (details about all Kate Grenville's books are elsewhere on this site). Her novels have won many awards both in Australia and the UK, several have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 645 reviews
October 4, 2020
Two books ago I declared that I am not one for historic fiction but I did enjoy Joanne Harris' Holy Fools. Now, two books later, I have just finished The Lieutenant and WOW!!
This book is based on true events but reads fluently as a novel, not a historic text. The story follows a young Lieutenant, Rooke, as he makes his way to New South Wales (Australia) in the 1780s. Initially, his role is part of the military accompanying a fleet of convicts sent to the new land to begin a new settlement. Upon arriving they find the land rugged, inaccessible, and dry. They also meet the indigenous population who they consider sly and savage. Basically, this is how we are taught the history of Australia.
Rooke is also an astronomer and mathematician and he manages to convince the Governor that his place, in the new settlement, is as an astronomer to sketch the Southern skies. To this end, he sets himself up on a hilltop, in his own hut with his equipment. Although he is still a part of the military and does have to attend to matters with the others, Rooke spends most of his time alone which enables him the opportunity to associate with some of the indigenous people.
Rooke befriends a young girl and with her, he begins to bridge the gap in the languages which eventually leads to a surprising outcome to the story.
Grenville's book shows a more realistic side of Australia's history. As I said earlier, it is based on true events and really had me supporting the indigenous people against the "invading" British. It is refreshing to read a more realistic version of events than what we were shown in school texts.
This book is based on true events but reads fluently as a novel, not a historic text. The story follows a young Lieutenant, Rooke, as he makes his way to New South Wales (Australia) in the 1780s. Initially, his role is part of the military accompanying a fleet of convicts sent to the new land to begin a new settlement. Upon arriving they find the land rugged, inaccessible, and dry. They also meet the indigenous population who they consider sly and savage. Basically, this is how we are taught the history of Australia.
Rooke is also an astronomer and mathematician and he manages to convince the Governor that his place, in the new settlement, is as an astronomer to sketch the Southern skies. To this end, he sets himself up on a hilltop, in his own hut with his equipment. Although he is still a part of the military and does have to attend to matters with the others, Rooke spends most of his time alone which enables him the opportunity to associate with some of the indigenous people.
Rooke befriends a young girl and with her, he begins to bridge the gap in the languages which eventually leads to a surprising outcome to the story.
Grenville's book shows a more realistic side of Australia's history. As I said earlier, it is based on true events and really had me supporting the indigenous people against the "invading" British. It is refreshing to read a more realistic version of events than what we were shown in school texts.
May 24, 2018
Daniel Rooke was five years old when it was confirmed to him how different he was from his peers. His love of numbers set him apart, made him a person to tease and ridicule, and this was his life until in 1775 and at thirteen, he met Dr Vickery who was a kindred spirit. His love of astronomy lit a passion and enthusiasm which would last Rooke his lifetime.
As a lieutenant who narrowly avoided death during the war, Daniel was assigned to the First Fleet which arrived in New South Wales in 1788. The rugged country was filled with aggressive but fearful natives and when Sydney Cove was named, the settlement in the new country began. Rooke’s great desire was to locate an area where he could live and work quietly and without the company of the other men; his observance of the night skies – so different to home – and the anticipation of the predicted Halley’s comet, excited him.
But it was Rooke’s friendship with a young Aboriginal girl named Tagaran which caused his life to change…
The Lieutenant is a fictionalized version of the life of William Dawes (Rooke), of the Marine Forces which landed with the First Fleet in 1788. Aussie author Kate Grenville has made it easy to feel empathy for Daniel Rooke; to take his journey with him and feel his heartache, his uncertainty and the connections he made. Recommended.
As a lieutenant who narrowly avoided death during the war, Daniel was assigned to the First Fleet which arrived in New South Wales in 1788. The rugged country was filled with aggressive but fearful natives and when Sydney Cove was named, the settlement in the new country began. Rooke’s great desire was to locate an area where he could live and work quietly and without the company of the other men; his observance of the night skies – so different to home – and the anticipation of the predicted Halley’s comet, excited him.
But it was Rooke’s friendship with a young Aboriginal girl named Tagaran which caused his life to change…
The Lieutenant is a fictionalized version of the life of William Dawes (Rooke), of the Marine Forces which landed with the First Fleet in 1788. Aussie author Kate Grenville has made it easy to feel empathy for Daniel Rooke; to take his journey with him and feel his heartache, his uncertainty and the connections he made. Recommended.
April 20, 2014
I expected a dry, factual story. That is what all of the reviews I read seemed to indicate.
How wrong this was. It was not dry, but it was not the snappy, fast paced stories that we are all used to reading these days. There was no danger or supprise waiting around every corner.
Facts, facts are sometimes dry and slow. An introduction into the word of a young boy and what he saw and how he felt in a world that he did not seem to fit into at all is what I saw and read. It was told as simply as it happened. A young boy, a math prodogy at five years old, already reading, and obsessed with finding prime numbers starts school. He is quiet. He does not know how to fit in. The teacher thinks he is stupid. He is bullied. He is taken to see a doctor who recognizes his gifts and at seven is yanked away from his family and placed into a Naval Acadamy School. He goes home on Sundays to be with his family. His only peace is in solitude. The summer he is thirteen, he meets the British Royal Astronomer. He is introduced to the night sky, and chess, and Euclid and Newton open up a whole new world to him. After school, he enlists in the Royal Marines and is sent off to fight in the war against the Americans, who are fighting for their Independence. In his first naval engagement, he is hit on the head and spends months in the hospital, finally recovering after being nursed by his sister Ann. Yeah, it was just about like that.
Then he is shipped to Australia to help settle the first colony called New South Wales, in 1788. He is still a marine, but he has been dispatched with the special orders from the Royal Astronomer to watch for the return of Halleys Comet. He sets up a small observatory on the top of a point at the entrance to Sydney Cove, a mile from the settlement. He records the wind direction, temperature, rainfall and weather conditions everyday into his notebook. Boring, huh?
It sounds boring, but then he meets some natives and starts learning the language they speak from a young girl and some other children, who come to visit his hill top. He writes down what he learns into a couple of notebooks. In what is not so plain to him, he falls in love, but there is trouble with the natives and the settlers and he is sent out on an expedition to capture some natives to bring back to the settlement to be punished and to be set up as an example of British justice. He rebels, goes back to the settlement and confronts the Governor. He is sent back to England to be tried for insubordination and never goes back to New South Wales. Is this a great story or what?
The story is based on a real person, who was really an astronomer, and really did write down the native Australian language that he learned. The rest of the story was embelished by Kate Grenville. It was wonderful. It was so simple, but so beautifully written. Her native characters were alive and their interactions with the main character, called Daniel Rooke were captivating. I could not help but admire Rooke and fall in love with him, a little. His character is so singular and so well explained. What happened to him and how the story ends, is for you to find out. I had tears in my eyes, from admiration at what he accomplished with his life and from sadness, as I read the last lines.
How wrong this was. It was not dry, but it was not the snappy, fast paced stories that we are all used to reading these days. There was no danger or supprise waiting around every corner.
Facts, facts are sometimes dry and slow. An introduction into the word of a young boy and what he saw and how he felt in a world that he did not seem to fit into at all is what I saw and read. It was told as simply as it happened. A young boy, a math prodogy at five years old, already reading, and obsessed with finding prime numbers starts school. He is quiet. He does not know how to fit in. The teacher thinks he is stupid. He is bullied. He is taken to see a doctor who recognizes his gifts and at seven is yanked away from his family and placed into a Naval Acadamy School. He goes home on Sundays to be with his family. His only peace is in solitude. The summer he is thirteen, he meets the British Royal Astronomer. He is introduced to the night sky, and chess, and Euclid and Newton open up a whole new world to him. After school, he enlists in the Royal Marines and is sent off to fight in the war against the Americans, who are fighting for their Independence. In his first naval engagement, he is hit on the head and spends months in the hospital, finally recovering after being nursed by his sister Ann. Yeah, it was just about like that.
Then he is shipped to Australia to help settle the first colony called New South Wales, in 1788. He is still a marine, but he has been dispatched with the special orders from the Royal Astronomer to watch for the return of Halleys Comet. He sets up a small observatory on the top of a point at the entrance to Sydney Cove, a mile from the settlement. He records the wind direction, temperature, rainfall and weather conditions everyday into his notebook. Boring, huh?
It sounds boring, but then he meets some natives and starts learning the language they speak from a young girl and some other children, who come to visit his hill top. He writes down what he learns into a couple of notebooks. In what is not so plain to him, he falls in love, but there is trouble with the natives and the settlers and he is sent out on an expedition to capture some natives to bring back to the settlement to be punished and to be set up as an example of British justice. He rebels, goes back to the settlement and confronts the Governor. He is sent back to England to be tried for insubordination and never goes back to New South Wales. Is this a great story or what?
The story is based on a real person, who was really an astronomer, and really did write down the native Australian language that he learned. The rest of the story was embelished by Kate Grenville. It was wonderful. It was so simple, but so beautifully written. Her native characters were alive and their interactions with the main character, called Daniel Rooke were captivating. I could not help but admire Rooke and fall in love with him, a little. His character is so singular and so well explained. What happened to him and how the story ends, is for you to find out. I had tears in my eyes, from admiration at what he accomplished with his life and from sadness, as I read the last lines.
February 16, 2013
In this novel, Kate Grenville returns to the time and place which inspired her in The Secret River: the early days of the British colony in New South Wales. This time her central character, Daniel Rooke, is based on Lieutenant William Dawes, the First Fleet’s astronomer, who was also a skilled linguist, engineer and surveyor.
Grenville portrays Rooke as a brilliant but shy and socially awkward man: a mathematician, musician, linguist and astronomer, who becomes friends with a young girl from the local Cadigal indigenous clan and learns and records her language. Through this relationship, Rooke finds out who he really is and learns where his true loyalties lie.
In some ways, reading this novel is like being plunged into an alternative universe where everything is the same, yet different. In her author’s note, Grenville states: “This is a novel; it should not be mistaken for history”. To reinforce this point, Grenville has renamed real life historical figures. William Dawes becomes Daniel Rooke. Dawes’ friend Patyegarang is renamed Tagaran. The first governor of the colony is not Arthur Phillip but James Gilbert. A chronicler of the early days of the colony - Watkin Tench - is now Captain Silk. I can see that renaming historical figures gave Grenville the freedom to depart from her sources and make the novel a work of the imagination rather than a work in which faithfulness to the historical facts is expected. However, as a reader with some knowledge of those historical facts, it was initially disconcerting to be confronted by characters I knew by other names. It ceased to matter, though, as I became fully engrossed in Rooke’s journey of self-discovery.
For me, the most fascinating aspect of the novel is Rooke’s connection with Tagaran and the process of learning and recording the Cadigal language. I love learning about language and at heart I’m a frustrated linguist. Anyone who has spent time learning a foreign language knows that magical moment when an undifferentiated mass of sound resolves itself into recognisable words and then into sentences in which the parts of speech can be identified, even if some of the individual words remain unfamiliar. Modern language learning is supported by teachers, manuals, dictionaries and sound recordings, which don’t make learning a language any less interesting, but do make the process predictable. Reading this novel made me appreciate how it must have been for those who learned a language not previously heard or recorded. When, through his interaction with Tagaran, Rooke starts to recognise not just individual words but the patterns formed by syntax and grammar, he wonders:
Was this what Galileo had felt, turning his telescope to the night sky and seeing stars that no one had seen before?
Learning a new vocabulary and grammar is one thing. Forming a connection with another human being through that language is something else. For Rooke, this starts to occur when he and Tagaran are able to share a joke. He records the moment:
What had passed between Tagaran and himself had gone far beyond vocabulary or grammatical forms. It was the heart of talking; not just the words and not just the meaning, but the way in which two people had found common ground and begun to discover the true names of things.
Rooke later contemplates what happens when understanding of language deepens to the extent that a real conversation can occur:
This exchange was not a language lesson. It was a conversation. For the first time, he and Tagaran were on the same side of the mirror of language, simply speaking to each other. Understanding went in both directions. Once two people shared a language, they could no longer use it to hide.
And then language leads to something else again; not just a conversation, but a relationship:
What he had not learned from Latin and Greek he was learning from the people of New South Wales. It was this: you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you. His friendship with Tagaran was not a list of objects … It was the slow constructing of the map of a relationship.
The names of things, if you truly wanted to understand them, were as much about the spaces between the words as they were about the words themselves. Learning a language was not a matter of joining two points with a line. It was a leap into the other.
In depicting the relationship between Daniel Rooke and Tagaran, Grenville shows the life-changing experiences which can result from true communication between people from totally different worlds. For William Dawes, the man on whom Daniel Rooke is based, his relationship with the Cadigal people of New South Wales was life-changing indeed. It directly led to his later career working for the abolition of slavery in Antigua.
This is neither a long novel, nor a difficult novel to read. What stops me from giving it five stars is that the last part of the work feels rushed. Very little time is devoted to Rooke’s experiences after he makes a decision which affects his future in the colony and the summing up of his career after leaving New South Wales comes too soon. Many novels are too long for their content. This one is arguably too short.
August 23, 2023
Kate Grenville was inspired by the life of William Dawes, a lieutenant of marines, who sailed with the British First Fleet that transported convicts to Australia in 1788. He was an intelligent man who left a record of his study of the language of the Aborigines of the Sydney area.
Grenville's character, Daniel Rooke, is a young man who is blessed with an aptitude for mathematics, astronomy, and languages, but feels uncomfortable in social situations. He enjoys using his mathematical skills as a commissioned officer and navigator on a ship, and eventually signs on a ship set for Australia to build a penal colony. He is tasked with tracking a comet that will supposedly be visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and a makeshift observatory is built on a high point in New South Wales. As a loner, Daniel is happy living away from the settlement. It also gives him the opportunity to befriend the Aboriginal people and begin to learn their language. He faces a conflict when he receives military orders that will target the native people who have connected with him.
The book focuses on Daniel's inner feelings and thought processes as he develops a bond with an Aboriginal child and learns their language. He is a kind man who is caught between the demands of the military and his own moral code. Kate Grenville's writing is lovely, and this book is especially recommended for lovers of thoughtful literary fiction.
Grenville's character, Daniel Rooke, is a young man who is blessed with an aptitude for mathematics, astronomy, and languages, but feels uncomfortable in social situations. He enjoys using his mathematical skills as a commissioned officer and navigator on a ship, and eventually signs on a ship set for Australia to build a penal colony. He is tasked with tracking a comet that will supposedly be visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and a makeshift observatory is built on a high point in New South Wales. As a loner, Daniel is happy living away from the settlement. It also gives him the opportunity to befriend the Aboriginal people and begin to learn their language. He faces a conflict when he receives military orders that will target the native people who have connected with him.
The book focuses on Daniel's inner feelings and thought processes as he develops a bond with an Aboriginal child and learns their language. He is a kind man who is caught between the demands of the military and his own moral code. Kate Grenville's writing is lovely, and this book is especially recommended for lovers of thoughtful literary fiction.
April 6, 2021
Boys born after 1788 don’t know how to decolonise. All they know is love astronomy, “not understand racism”, eat morsel of bread ration and lie.
1.5/5 stars for Ms Grenville and her 302 pages of white guilt.
1.5/5 stars for Ms Grenville and her 302 pages of white guilt.
May 25, 2017
Loved it. I knew it was based on a real story, but I didn't realise it was so closely based that it was really a fictional biography - the real story with the blanks filled in. Only the names were changed to protect, etc.
But limiting a review to such an offhand summary would be to sell Grenville short, and she is much too valuable a literary asset to do that. She certainly did more than fill the blanks.
She has dramatised a remarkable set of real circumstances - a sensitive young man who comes out with the First Fleet and attempts to set up an astronomical outstation where he can live, work and observe the night skies in seclusion. He tries to separate himself as much as possible from his rough and ready compatriots whose cruel behaviour appals him.
Grenville can set a scene and create a mood effortlessly, by which I mean, there is no effort on the reader's part because the words flow so naturally you feel that's the way they were always meant to be put together. In some writing, you can read a phrase and almost see the author glowing and thinking "I wrote that!"
I never feel that with Grenville. The rivers, the dust, the humpies, the weather - they're all such a natural part of the story that I never feel like skipping a paragraph to get on with the plot, which happens often enough with other authors, I'm ashamed to admit.
The young fellow comes to know, awkwardly at first, some local Aboriginal people, breaks bread and trades words, but most importantly, establishes a shy, mutual respect with one young girl in particular. And all of that is true. If it didn't happen exactly as she describes, it should have.
Loved it.
But limiting a review to such an offhand summary would be to sell Grenville short, and she is much too valuable a literary asset to do that. She certainly did more than fill the blanks.
She has dramatised a remarkable set of real circumstances - a sensitive young man who comes out with the First Fleet and attempts to set up an astronomical outstation where he can live, work and observe the night skies in seclusion. He tries to separate himself as much as possible from his rough and ready compatriots whose cruel behaviour appals him.
Grenville can set a scene and create a mood effortlessly, by which I mean, there is no effort on the reader's part because the words flow so naturally you feel that's the way they were always meant to be put together. In some writing, you can read a phrase and almost see the author glowing and thinking "I wrote that!"
I never feel that with Grenville. The rivers, the dust, the humpies, the weather - they're all such a natural part of the story that I never feel like skipping a paragraph to get on with the plot, which happens often enough with other authors, I'm ashamed to admit.
The young fellow comes to know, awkwardly at first, some local Aboriginal people, breaks bread and trades words, but most importantly, establishes a shy, mutual respect with one young girl in particular. And all of that is true. If it didn't happen exactly as she describes, it should have.
Loved it.
September 27, 2017
Ευκολοδιάβαστο, συναρπαστικό αλλά δεν εμβαθύνει.
March 21, 2018
The Lieutenant is about Daniel Rooke and his self-discovery of who he is. Lieutenant Daniel Rooke arrived in Australia in 1788 on the first fleet. Lieutenant Daniel Rooke never felt in belong in the marines, so he wandered away from camp and set up an observatory and in the proceeds befriended an aboriginal woman called Tagaran. The readers of The Lieutenant will continue to follow this blossoming friendship between Tagaran and Lieutenant Daniel Rooke to see what happens.
I did enjoy reading The Lieutenant. However, it was not as good as The Secret River for me it took awhile for me to engage with the plot and the characters. Kate Grenville does a great job in bring early Australian settlement alive for her readers. I love Kate Grenville portrayals of her characters. Lieutenant is well written and researched by Kate Grenville. I like that Kate Grenville ensures that her readers found out what happened to Lieutenant Daniel Rooke after he left Australia.
The readers of The Lieutenant will learn about living in Sydney during the eighteen century. Also, the readers of The Lieutenant will learn about setting up an observatory.
I recommend this book.
I did enjoy reading The Lieutenant. However, it was not as good as The Secret River for me it took awhile for me to engage with the plot and the characters. Kate Grenville does a great job in bring early Australian settlement alive for her readers. I love Kate Grenville portrayals of her characters. Lieutenant is well written and researched by Kate Grenville. I like that Kate Grenville ensures that her readers found out what happened to Lieutenant Daniel Rooke after he left Australia.
The readers of The Lieutenant will learn about living in Sydney during the eighteen century. Also, the readers of The Lieutenant will learn about setting up an observatory.
I recommend this book.
December 19, 2015
I have read a considerable amount of Australian history over the years and though The Lieutenant is at least part invention, this fictionalised story has had a more powerful effect on me than has reading the more dispassionate histories.
I approached ‘The Lieutenant with a sense of foreboding, knowing that its theme of first contacts between English settlers and Aboriginal people in Sydney must deal with cruelty, violence and dispossession.
Kate Grenville has managed, however, to write about the characters and their actions in such a way that we see only obliquely the brutality of life for convicts and soldiers, and are spared being made to face the actuality of an atrocity ordered by the colony’s governor.
Atrocities similar to that planned in ’The Lieutenant’ did take place in Australia, with hunting parties sent out to kill Aboriginal people to demonstrate superior force, as ‘punishment’, or simply to push them off the land they occupied.
The character of Daniel Rooke chooses not to take part in the daily life of the new convict settlement, but to isolate himself on a nearby hill top where he establishes a primitive observatory. Rooke’s preferred displacement allows the reader to see through removed eyes as well, confronting the horrors only when Rooke is forced to: hanging a marine who contested an order (this in England before being sent to Australia); the flogging of a food thief in the colony; and enforced participation in the punishment expedition against the ‘natives’.
Isolated here, he is able to forge relationships with several Aboriginal people and to learn and record their language.
Rooke conceals this, knowing that the Governor desperately wants contact between the two peoples and to have someone to learn their language. He is aware, and so are we, that concealment might have consequences. But he also feels that revelation is likely to be a betrayal of some sort, and it too will have consequences.
We see early in the book the dilemma that will haunt the soldier Rooke and that he must eventually confront: will he obey unquestioningly or hold to principles he believes in.
This realization stirs in England when he is forced to witness the punishment of three marine lieutenants who talked about disobeying – potential mutiny. The leader was hanged, the other two humiliated and expelled from the forces; ‘sent into oblivion, …They would never again have a place in the world’.
‘Rooke knew he would not forget. In that afternoon in which feeling had been assaulted into numbness he saw that under the benign surface of life in His Majesty’s service, under its rituals and its uniforms and pleasantries, was horror.
‘He had thought to find a niche in which he could make a life [as astronomer and navigator]. What was forced into his understanding that eternal and burning afternoon, was that a payment would be extracted. His Majesty had no use for any of the thoughts and sensibilities and wishes that a man might contain, much less the disobedience to which he might be inspired. To bend to the king’s will required the suspension of human response. A man was obliged to become part of the mighty imperial machine. To refuse was to become inhuman in another way: either a bag of meat or a walking dead man’ (p. 29).
A little later, when Rooke is offered the opportunity to join the first fleet to the new colony of New South Wales, he accepts, knowing he cannot trust the machinery of life to move in harmony, as he had. ‘Now he did not trust that machine. He did not think he ever would again. Life might promise, but he knew now that while it gave it also took’. (pp 38-39)
These warnings come throughout the book, with perhaps too heavy a hand.
Rooke volunteers to join th expedition to found the penal colony of New South Wales, urged by his friend Silk, a great story teller, who is excited at the prospect of writing about the new land.
Rooke realises that Silk too ‘had been marking time, waiting for his vocation to become possible….[W]hen Silk told those stories in the mess it was not simply to entertain. For Silk, the making of the tale – the elegance of its phrases, the flexing of its shape – was the point of the exercise. The instinct to rework an event, so that the telling became almost more real than the thing itself – that had been born in Silk the way the pleasures of manipulating numbers had been born in Rooke’. (p39)
Silk becomes increasingly unpleasant a character throughout the book, manipulative, spiteful. He pries for information to round out his stories for publication, regardless of consequences. Rooke becomes increasingly careful about what he tells Silk, protective of himself and friends, white and black. Silk’s gaze on Rooke is ‘wordless coaxing’. Rook ‘felt ugly in his skin, clumsy in his attempt to be secret. He wondered if writers of narratives could smell when there was more to a story than met the eye.
‘All Silk hungered for was a piquant addition to his narrative [about the capture of Aboriginal men]. But if he should get hold of the story the way Gardiner had told it [to Rooke] in the privacy of the hut, and make it public, it would be a catastrophe.’ Gardiner would be sent back to England for court-martial and punishment. (p122-3).
In this scene, Rooke is running through the consequences, not of Gardiner’s disobedience to orders, but to his regret at having obeyed them.
Not long after this scene, Rooke at last sees ‘how different they truly were, he and Silk. Silk’s impulse was to make the strange familiar, to transform it into well-shaped smooth phrases.
‘His own was to enter that strangeness and lose himself in it’.
Silk is slippery, smooth, slick. Slid a suggestion to the Governor that Rooke be included in a punitive expedition against the natives to Rooke’s utter horror. Slipped sharpened hatchets into bags to carry their heads back in triumph to the settlement.
Rooke is straight, moves in straight lines like the rook on the chess board, vulnerable to unforeseen attacks from the side. When the final terrible decision has to be made, he acts to save Aboriginal lives and puts himself outside the life he has known, into exile.
This story is based on real characters in the early years of the settlement of Sydney in the colony of New South Wales from 1788 onwards. William Dawes is the model for Daniel Rooke. Watkin Tench, the diarist, is the original around whom Captain Silk is draw. Governor Phillip has become Governor Gilbert. Author Kate Grenville notes that though she used historical sources, including Tench’s works, this is a novel, not history.
I approached ‘The Lieutenant with a sense of foreboding, knowing that its theme of first contacts between English settlers and Aboriginal people in Sydney must deal with cruelty, violence and dispossession.
Kate Grenville has managed, however, to write about the characters and their actions in such a way that we see only obliquely the brutality of life for convicts and soldiers, and are spared being made to face the actuality of an atrocity ordered by the colony’s governor.
Atrocities similar to that planned in ’The Lieutenant’ did take place in Australia, with hunting parties sent out to kill Aboriginal people to demonstrate superior force, as ‘punishment’, or simply to push them off the land they occupied.
The character of Daniel Rooke chooses not to take part in the daily life of the new convict settlement, but to isolate himself on a nearby hill top where he establishes a primitive observatory. Rooke’s preferred displacement allows the reader to see through removed eyes as well, confronting the horrors only when Rooke is forced to: hanging a marine who contested an order (this in England before being sent to Australia); the flogging of a food thief in the colony; and enforced participation in the punishment expedition against the ‘natives’.
Isolated here, he is able to forge relationships with several Aboriginal people and to learn and record their language.
Rooke conceals this, knowing that the Governor desperately wants contact between the two peoples and to have someone to learn their language. He is aware, and so are we, that concealment might have consequences. But he also feels that revelation is likely to be a betrayal of some sort, and it too will have consequences.
We see early in the book the dilemma that will haunt the soldier Rooke and that he must eventually confront: will he obey unquestioningly or hold to principles he believes in.
This realization stirs in England when he is forced to witness the punishment of three marine lieutenants who talked about disobeying – potential mutiny. The leader was hanged, the other two humiliated and expelled from the forces; ‘sent into oblivion, …They would never again have a place in the world’.
‘Rooke knew he would not forget. In that afternoon in which feeling had been assaulted into numbness he saw that under the benign surface of life in His Majesty’s service, under its rituals and its uniforms and pleasantries, was horror.
‘He had thought to find a niche in which he could make a life [as astronomer and navigator]. What was forced into his understanding that eternal and burning afternoon, was that a payment would be extracted. His Majesty had no use for any of the thoughts and sensibilities and wishes that a man might contain, much less the disobedience to which he might be inspired. To bend to the king’s will required the suspension of human response. A man was obliged to become part of the mighty imperial machine. To refuse was to become inhuman in another way: either a bag of meat or a walking dead man’ (p. 29).
A little later, when Rooke is offered the opportunity to join the first fleet to the new colony of New South Wales, he accepts, knowing he cannot trust the machinery of life to move in harmony, as he had. ‘Now he did not trust that machine. He did not think he ever would again. Life might promise, but he knew now that while it gave it also took’. (pp 38-39)
These warnings come throughout the book, with perhaps too heavy a hand.
Rooke volunteers to join th expedition to found the penal colony of New South Wales, urged by his friend Silk, a great story teller, who is excited at the prospect of writing about the new land.
Rooke realises that Silk too ‘had been marking time, waiting for his vocation to become possible….[W]hen Silk told those stories in the mess it was not simply to entertain. For Silk, the making of the tale – the elegance of its phrases, the flexing of its shape – was the point of the exercise. The instinct to rework an event, so that the telling became almost more real than the thing itself – that had been born in Silk the way the pleasures of manipulating numbers had been born in Rooke’. (p39)
Silk becomes increasingly unpleasant a character throughout the book, manipulative, spiteful. He pries for information to round out his stories for publication, regardless of consequences. Rooke becomes increasingly careful about what he tells Silk, protective of himself and friends, white and black. Silk’s gaze on Rooke is ‘wordless coaxing’. Rook ‘felt ugly in his skin, clumsy in his attempt to be secret. He wondered if writers of narratives could smell when there was more to a story than met the eye.
‘All Silk hungered for was a piquant addition to his narrative [about the capture of Aboriginal men]. But if he should get hold of the story the way Gardiner had told it [to Rooke] in the privacy of the hut, and make it public, it would be a catastrophe.’ Gardiner would be sent back to England for court-martial and punishment. (p122-3).
In this scene, Rooke is running through the consequences, not of Gardiner’s disobedience to orders, but to his regret at having obeyed them.
Not long after this scene, Rooke at last sees ‘how different they truly were, he and Silk. Silk’s impulse was to make the strange familiar, to transform it into well-shaped smooth phrases.
‘His own was to enter that strangeness and lose himself in it’.
Silk is slippery, smooth, slick. Slid a suggestion to the Governor that Rooke be included in a punitive expedition against the natives to Rooke’s utter horror. Slipped sharpened hatchets into bags to carry their heads back in triumph to the settlement.
Rooke is straight, moves in straight lines like the rook on the chess board, vulnerable to unforeseen attacks from the side. When the final terrible decision has to be made, he acts to save Aboriginal lives and puts himself outside the life he has known, into exile.
This story is based on real characters in the early years of the settlement of Sydney in the colony of New South Wales from 1788 onwards. William Dawes is the model for Daniel Rooke. Watkin Tench, the diarist, is the original around whom Captain Silk is draw. Governor Phillip has become Governor Gilbert. Author Kate Grenville notes that though she used historical sources, including Tench’s works, this is a novel, not history.
May 1, 2012
Not a book I enjoyed. Personally I longed for this to be more of a 'human interest story' about relationships and less of a story, no matter how interesting, about astronomy and Daniel's unravelling of the native language.
Sectioned into what was effectively three parts I really struggled with the first part which dealt mainly with Daniel's childhood in England as it felt as if I wasn't reading a story so much as reading a list of notes the author had jotted down to remind herself of where she intended to go with the story.
The rest of the book, the second portion (set in Australia), the third (the latter part of Daniel's life in Antigua) fared a little better but overall I was disappointed in that the author never seemed to delve too deeply into any of the issues raised but rather seemed to take the reader right to the brink of something deep and meaningful only to shy away at the last moment.
Not at all what I was expecting from this novel, at heart I think it had some really important things to say and yet everything about it, both plot and characters, seemed to be totally underdeveloped and woefully lacking.
Sectioned into what was effectively three parts I really struggled with the first part which dealt mainly with Daniel's childhood in England as it felt as if I wasn't reading a story so much as reading a list of notes the author had jotted down to remind herself of where she intended to go with the story.
The rest of the book, the second portion (set in Australia), the third (the latter part of Daniel's life in Antigua) fared a little better but overall I was disappointed in that the author never seemed to delve too deeply into any of the issues raised but rather seemed to take the reader right to the brink of something deep and meaningful only to shy away at the last moment.
Not at all what I was expecting from this novel, at heart I think it had some really important things to say and yet everything about it, both plot and characters, seemed to be totally underdeveloped and woefully lacking.
December 16, 2014
A really lovely, satisfying read. Similar in many ways to The Secret River but, for me, so much better. Although Grenville's writing sometimes seems simplistic due to her very measured way of writing, if you take the time to think about the words and phrases on the page, the depth and beauty of her descriptions of people, places, and the natural world, are achingly poignant. I suppose that's why I don't listen to audiobooks.
The timeless message of the book is that to stand by and watch whilst others do evil is to be complicit. If you're not true to yourself and your own beliefs, you have nothing.
The timeless message of the book is that to stand by and watch whilst others do evil is to be complicit. If you're not true to yourself and your own beliefs, you have nothing.
July 25, 2018
This novel narrates the story of Daniel Rooke. At the beginning, it displays Daniel's interest in astronomy and the sciences. As he grows up, he enters the navy in order to travel and to be able to work as an astronomer.
In 1778, he sets out in a journey that is going to change the History of the world. He is a lieutenant in the first fleet that is taking prisoners and is going to establish a colony in New South Wales.
Having a letter of recomendation by the Royal Astronomer, he is allowed to set up a tent separated from the rest of the garrison. His main aim is to chart the contellations and to wait for the comet that is going to be seen for the first time after hundreds of years.
However, the stars are not the only things that he is going to chart. Becoming patient and humble, he is contacted by a group of natives that live nearby but have been suspicious of the invaders' intentions.
Soon, a relationship between Daniel and a young aborigen girl called Tagaran grows. This connection is going to make Daniel not only learn the language but also the fact that the natives are not as different from himself.
In times that not being western was dangerous, Daniel is trying to build a society in which everybody's rights are respected, even the natives who are considered inferior by the English.
mail: ana.ovejero@gmail.com
instagram:ananbooks
twitter: @ananbooks1
In 1778, he sets out in a journey that is going to change the History of the world. He is a lieutenant in the first fleet that is taking prisoners and is going to establish a colony in New South Wales.
Having a letter of recomendation by the Royal Astronomer, he is allowed to set up a tent separated from the rest of the garrison. His main aim is to chart the contellations and to wait for the comet that is going to be seen for the first time after hundreds of years.
However, the stars are not the only things that he is going to chart. Becoming patient and humble, he is contacted by a group of natives that live nearby but have been suspicious of the invaders' intentions.
Soon, a relationship between Daniel and a young aborigen girl called Tagaran grows. This connection is going to make Daniel not only learn the language but also the fact that the natives are not as different from himself.
In times that not being western was dangerous, Daniel is trying to build a society in which everybody's rights are respected, even the natives who are considered inferior by the English.
mail: ana.ovejero@gmail.com
instagram:ananbooks
twitter: @ananbooks1
February 27, 2019
This book is inspired by recorded documents of William Dawes' travels, a lieutenant who was on board the First Fleet of convicts that were brought from England to Australia in 1788. Although the author makes extensive use of historical records, the story is a fictional imagining about how this young scholar learned to love the new land and to engage with the local natives. He becomes so attached to them that he finds himself questioning his own culture and purpose of settlement. He realizes that he thinks very differently about the natives and gradually departs from his duties of marines lieutenant and instead starts a notebook where he records words and sentences that his 'new' friends teach him. Language is beautifully portrayed here as the vehicle that can bring together people as much as it can demonstrate their vast differences. This is the second book in Grenville's trilogy and i enjoyed it just as much as I did the first.
October 8, 2012
Kate Grenville based her novel on the life of a real Marine officer, William Dawes, who laid the foundation for learning the Aboriginal language - his studies were the most comprehensive at the time, and his notes show the friendly relationship he had with a native girl. Dawes later fought for abolition of slavery in Antigua and died in poverty. Grenville writes this novel about him - as Daniel Rooke - with great affection, and subtlety.
This is a beautiful novel - sensitive, learned and heartbreaking. It is the true tale of a socially awkward young man whose solitary pursuits of mathematics and astronomy insulate him from the power plays and moral compromises of 18th century society. His world is totally turned upside down when he travels with the First Fleet to Botany Bay and everything familiar disappears. In his desire to understand his new reality, he discovers that language is no barrier to human relationships built on the eternal values of trust, honesty and respect. But then the demands of Empire and the simple ways of the Australian wonderland collide and he must make choices.
Grenville's skill is such that we cannot help but feel empathy with the young Rooke from the very first page. Her characters are realistic, although Silk is perhaps not what he first appears to be. The dialogue takes us very effectively back to the 18th century. Grenville conveys the feel of the place and the time with consummate ease.
This is a novel about language and communication, solitude and loneliness, duty and integrity. Grenville explores friendship, truth, a man's place in the universe. And what is worth risking one's career or even one's life for. The end leaves a lump in the throat.
What a pleasure this novel was to read. Once again, I am extremely taken with Ms. Grenville's beautiful prose and her ability to take the reader to the time and place of her novel and keep him/her there.
March 18, 2009
Kate Grenville's latest book tells the story of Daniel Rooke, an astronomer with the First Fleet sent from England to bring convicts to Botany Bay and his interaction with the aboriginal people, and in particular with a young girl called Tagaran. It's based on the historical account of William Dawes, lieutenant and astronomer with that first expedition who had a similar friendship with a young aboriginal girl.
The character of Daniel Rooke is powerfully conceived and his story is immensely human and deeply compelling. Much of the narrative focuses on his inner thoughts and on the nature of language and communication as he and Tagaran teach each other their resepctive tongues.
Like his historical conuterpart, Daniel Rooke is ordered to take part in an expedition to capture of kill some of the aboriginees as punishment for the killing of a white man and it is his reaction to these orders that forms the climax of the book.
My main reservation about this novel is that the ending is weak and feels rushed. Everything up to the climax seems to have been created with tremendous attention to detail. But the climax itself and what follows is almost glossed over so that I was left feeling a little disappointed.
The character of Daniel Rooke is powerfully conceived and his story is immensely human and deeply compelling. Much of the narrative focuses on his inner thoughts and on the nature of language and communication as he and Tagaran teach each other their resepctive tongues.
Like his historical conuterpart, Daniel Rooke is ordered to take part in an expedition to capture of kill some of the aboriginees as punishment for the killing of a white man and it is his reaction to these orders that forms the climax of the book.
My main reservation about this novel is that the ending is weak and feels rushed. Everything up to the climax seems to have been created with tremendous attention to detail. But the climax itself and what follows is almost glossed over so that I was left feeling a little disappointed.
December 31, 2013
This is about the opening up of the convict settlements of Australia. It follows the life of a young lieutenant who is actually involved with astronomical studies. He is a good linguist and becomes involved with local aborigines - as the relationship between the English and the Aborigines deteriorates he finds himself unable to please both sides.
This is well-written as all Kate Grenville books are and although it is a stand-alone story it continues with the theme of Australian history that she has in her other books The Secret River and Sarah Thornhill.
This one is a little restrained in its writing - the main character is not as sympathetic as in the other books, and as such I did not feel as connected to the narrative. However, the book takes the reader through the events slowly with a gentleness that belies the cruelty of what is actually witnessed by our protaganist.
Worth a read!
This is well-written as all Kate Grenville books are and although it is a stand-alone story it continues with the theme of Australian history that she has in her other books The Secret River and Sarah Thornhill.
This one is a little restrained in its writing - the main character is not as sympathetic as in the other books, and as such I did not feel as connected to the narrative. However, the book takes the reader through the events slowly with a gentleness that belies the cruelty of what is actually witnessed by our protaganist.
Worth a read!
July 23, 2024
Due to reasons that may pertain to bias, I will not be rating this book, but my goodness was that an experience. The ending wasn't as horrible as I originally thought it would be, but I still did not enjoy this. Let's be frank; we have enough stories told from the perspective of the coloniser, stories about "meaning well" and all that jazz. Maybe it's time we stopped telling them and listened to the perspective of the colonised.
UPDATE: Never mind. This book absolutely sucks. The two stars are for the prose at some points and the fact that I can rip Grenville's words up without fear of ruining a favourite novel or something.
UPDATE: Never mind. This book absolutely sucks. The two stars are for the prose at some points and the fact that I can rip Grenville's words up without fear of ruining a favourite novel or something.
February 26, 2011
In late 18th century England, Daniel Rooke is a marine lieutenant who reluctantly goes to war for the Crown in the American Revolution. He was always a square peg, bullied by other boys in his youth. A generally solitary person, he studies math and music and gazes at the stars. His true calling is astronomy and linguistics, not fighting. Physically toughened by the violence he witnesses in the war, he continues to remain an outsider to the status quo. He seeks knowledge, unity, and connectedness with the constellations and the cosmos. He is not comforted by the stern God of the chaplain's book; his heaven is within the heavenly bodies of the universe. He believes that to injure any is to damage all.
After the war, Daniel is recommended to go with a regiment to remote New South Wales, where his Majesty has mapped it as an ideal place to deposit an overflow of prison convicts. Rooke goes primarily as an astronomer, as a man of science--to deduce, to calculate, and to wait for a comet. He constructs an Observatory away from the regiment and the convicts and busies himself with his sextants, his books, his graphs, and his thoughts.
What follows is a stunning journey of Rooke's consciousness, instigated by the presence of the Aboriginal natives of the island. Before long, a contrast takes shape between the regiment's condescending treatment and Daniel's touching gestures toward the natives. He opens his Observatory and his soul to them, awed by their strange beauty and unfamiliar language. For the first time in his life, his heart overflows with his fate as he is magnetized and forever changed by the humanity of a community and by a child that especially and fiercely affects him.
Inspired by a true event, this story is a timeless, soul-piercing tale of compassion, mercy, and empathy. It is a parable limning the harmonic essence of our link to every human being, to our poignant connection to all galaxies, to our bearing with every rock and our inextricable flow with every river. It is a beauty that cannot be destroyed by our crude conquests. It is the eloquence of humanity.
A searing epic is contained in this slender novel that unfolds like a fugue. It is, finally, a beautiful, peerless image of grace and benevolence. If an artist captured this eloquence in a painting, the canvas would reveal the forgiving soul of nature and mankind.
After the war, Daniel is recommended to go with a regiment to remote New South Wales, where his Majesty has mapped it as an ideal place to deposit an overflow of prison convicts. Rooke goes primarily as an astronomer, as a man of science--to deduce, to calculate, and to wait for a comet. He constructs an Observatory away from the regiment and the convicts and busies himself with his sextants, his books, his graphs, and his thoughts.
What follows is a stunning journey of Rooke's consciousness, instigated by the presence of the Aboriginal natives of the island. Before long, a contrast takes shape between the regiment's condescending treatment and Daniel's touching gestures toward the natives. He opens his Observatory and his soul to them, awed by their strange beauty and unfamiliar language. For the first time in his life, his heart overflows with his fate as he is magnetized and forever changed by the humanity of a community and by a child that especially and fiercely affects him.
Inspired by a true event, this story is a timeless, soul-piercing tale of compassion, mercy, and empathy. It is a parable limning the harmonic essence of our link to every human being, to our poignant connection to all galaxies, to our bearing with every rock and our inextricable flow with every river. It is a beauty that cannot be destroyed by our crude conquests. It is the eloquence of humanity.
A searing epic is contained in this slender novel that unfolds like a fugue. It is, finally, a beautiful, peerless image of grace and benevolence. If an artist captured this eloquence in a painting, the canvas would reveal the forgiving soul of nature and mankind.
February 25, 2021
If you loved The Secret River, then you will want to read The Lieutenant.
A wonderful piece of Australian historical fiction based upon the diaries of lieutenant William Dawes, a scholar of astronomy, maths and languages this is the second book in the Thornhill trilogy. Don't expect another instalment of Sarah Thornhill's life however, as this book is related to The Secret River (book 1) only in its location.
Set in New South Wales on the site of Australia's first English penal colony - Botany Bay - the book tells the story of Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, who is given the task of establishing the first observatory in Australia. Rooke, who has seen himself as an outsider since birth, is shocked by the farcical world he believes the first settlement to have become, one that is starkly in contrast to what he believes mankind's place in the universe should be. Part scientific mind at play-part personal intrigue, he befriends the natives to Botany Bay, who convey their desire for peace and friendship, as well as bewilderment at the arrival of the colony on their land, and forms a special bond with a young girl. However, he soon comes to realise that language to mankind is not just a jumble of letters to make words or a means to make commands, nor is it something as fickle as "news" worthy of a notable report in a military despatch. Through learning the native language and building a unique bond with his Aboriginal teacher, he not only comes to understand deeply the love and connection to country that his friend and her tribe have but also how contrary the ideals of the colony he is entwined within are to hers and her people.
Unfortunately his friendship is unravelled by violence unleashed in a reverse episode of education in which the colonials aim to teach their native friends a lesson.
Kate Grenville's writing is something to be savoured. So read this book in a quiet part of your life, when have time to enjoy the writing and when you want to take comfort in true friendship, and have time to look around you and relish the wonders of the universe and your special place in it.
A wonderful piece of Australian historical fiction based upon the diaries of lieutenant William Dawes, a scholar of astronomy, maths and languages this is the second book in the Thornhill trilogy. Don't expect another instalment of Sarah Thornhill's life however, as this book is related to The Secret River (book 1) only in its location.
Set in New South Wales on the site of Australia's first English penal colony - Botany Bay - the book tells the story of Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, who is given the task of establishing the first observatory in Australia. Rooke, who has seen himself as an outsider since birth, is shocked by the farcical world he believes the first settlement to have become, one that is starkly in contrast to what he believes mankind's place in the universe should be. Part scientific mind at play-part personal intrigue, he befriends the natives to Botany Bay, who convey their desire for peace and friendship, as well as bewilderment at the arrival of the colony on their land, and forms a special bond with a young girl. However, he soon comes to realise that language to mankind is not just a jumble of letters to make words or a means to make commands, nor is it something as fickle as "news" worthy of a notable report in a military despatch. Through learning the native language and building a unique bond with his Aboriginal teacher, he not only comes to understand deeply the love and connection to country that his friend and her tribe have but also how contrary the ideals of the colony he is entwined within are to hers and her people.
Unfortunately his friendship is unravelled by violence unleashed in a reverse episode of education in which the colonials aim to teach their native friends a lesson.
Kate Grenville's writing is something to be savoured. So read this book in a quiet part of your life, when have time to enjoy the writing and when you want to take comfort in true friendship, and have time to look around you and relish the wonders of the universe and your special place in it.
August 18, 2009
Kate Grenville's The Secret River is one of my all-time favorite books, not only for the plot and the characters, but for Grenville's complete mastery over the English language. She knows how to wield it and wind it and make it magical. Part of the excitement of opening a new book, for me, is in the hope of discovering an author like Grenville, who can take my breath away with her writing.
The Lieutenant centers around the same theme as The Secret River- the colonization of Australia by the British, and the subsequent race relations between the British and the natives. She focuses particularly on the struggles of conscience many people faced. She approaches this topic, always, in a manner that manages to be sympathetic to both sides. Her language in this book is just as remarkable as it is in The Secret River- she uses such simple words, really, but she uses them so well.
Somehow, though, this story did not have the same magic for me that The Secret River did. I did not feel as emotionally invested in the characters. That's not to say that Daniel Rooke is not a commendable and admirable person, or that he wasn't fleshed out enough. He was- there was just something slightly flat about him to me. And I don't think I ever got to know any of the other characters well enough to warm to them. The spark of interest never quite ignited into a flame.
This book is shorter than it seems- I read it pretty quickly, and I don't think I was rushing at all to finish it. I think Grenville spends more time on Rooke's life before he reaches Australia, and so the time he is in Australia seems truncated in comparison. Rooke disappointed me as a character after the complexity of William Thornhill in The Secret River. I think she could have developed him more and made the story a bit longer to give readers a better read on him.
I did enjoy reading this book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Australian history and race relations. But I would much, much more highly recommend The Secret River. It is fantastic.
The Lieutenant centers around the same theme as The Secret River- the colonization of Australia by the British, and the subsequent race relations between the British and the natives. She focuses particularly on the struggles of conscience many people faced. She approaches this topic, always, in a manner that manages to be sympathetic to both sides. Her language in this book is just as remarkable as it is in The Secret River- she uses such simple words, really, but she uses them so well.
Somehow, though, this story did not have the same magic for me that The Secret River did. I did not feel as emotionally invested in the characters. That's not to say that Daniel Rooke is not a commendable and admirable person, or that he wasn't fleshed out enough. He was- there was just something slightly flat about him to me. And I don't think I ever got to know any of the other characters well enough to warm to them. The spark of interest never quite ignited into a flame.
This book is shorter than it seems- I read it pretty quickly, and I don't think I was rushing at all to finish it. I think Grenville spends more time on Rooke's life before he reaches Australia, and so the time he is in Australia seems truncated in comparison. Rooke disappointed me as a character after the complexity of William Thornhill in The Secret River. I think she could have developed him more and made the story a bit longer to give readers a better read on him.
I did enjoy reading this book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Australian history and race relations. But I would much, much more highly recommend The Secret River. It is fantastic.
July 7, 2020
it was really engaging, with strong characterisation and beautiful integration of literary devices. the metonyms were intelligently added -- has a great ability to be connected to our 21st cent. perspective + the historical groundwork. i really loved rooke's perspective as he incredibly interesting, and his relationships with the aboriginal community is especially heartwarming.
also this book made me mad. white people are the worst wbk
also this book made me mad. white people are the worst wbk
September 28, 2021
white saviour complex
April 7, 2019
Kate Grenville is a wonderful writer, one of Australia's best authors, I enjoyed reading this novel they spoke about obstacles to be a scientist in the 18th century,
Daniel Rooke was a quite clever child, he studied Astronomy at Portsmouth Naval Academy, he spoke 5 languages, English, French, Greek, Latin and German . It was difficult to be a scientist in the 18th century, Dr Vickery had explained to him that the world didn't need Astronomers, he couldn't spend his life waiting for some other man to die to get an appointment for a job, he needs to look to War with the American, British Army they need men even boy students. He got his first chance to be a lieutenant. He landed in a new area called New South Wales. He set up an observatory to study the stars.
Daniel Rooke was a quite clever child, he studied Astronomy at Portsmouth Naval Academy, he spoke 5 languages, English, French, Greek, Latin and German . It was difficult to be a scientist in the 18th century, Dr Vickery had explained to him that the world didn't need Astronomers, he couldn't spend his life waiting for some other man to die to get an appointment for a job, he needs to look to War with the American, British Army they need men even boy students. He got his first chance to be a lieutenant. He landed in a new area called New South Wales. He set up an observatory to study the stars.
March 2, 2020
I found this book fascinating in that I’m assuming it is based on some historical truth.. the language barriers between the early settlers and the aboriginals and in particular the main character who had knowledge in linguistics and was able to communicate and write down words as he came into contact with the aboriginal peoples. Communication is so important in understanding...The story around this was brutal and true...
February 8, 2024
Probably one of my favourite KG novels. The eloquence and feeling in her writing of Rooke was a pleasure. I loved reading his wonder, admiration and respect for the First Nations peoples. If only there were more like him in those times.
January 16, 2018
Was ok. Start was slow & boring, it ramped up and got easier to read towards the middle, but nearing the end I got bored again
October 21, 2018
Audiobook. Slow beginning and I almost gave up. Redeemed itself at the end.
May 2, 2024
Читала на русском. Многое хорошо.
July 4, 2016
A Universe of Impossibility
Kate Grenville has a genius for placing her readers at the heart of a moral dilemma and making us feel it as though it were our own. Unbearably, it is a context whose outcome we already know, where good decisions are virtually impossible; even the most sympathetic characters will be forced by the tide of history to make, or at least condone, decisions that they feel to be morally wrong. In her magnificent previous novel, The Secret River, Grenville fictionalized the life of one of her own ancestors, an early convict settler in New South Wales, able with difficulty to wrest a living from the strange terrain, but ultimately defeated by the problem of coexisting with the aboriginal people. Now in The Lieutenant, she isolates the issue in a clearer spotlight, going back half a generation to fill out the story of a young marine lieutenant, William Dawes, who came to Sydney in 1788 with the First Fleet, and began the first study of the aboriginal tongue.
Daniel Rooke, as the lieutenant is called in this fictional version, is presented as a precocious child but socially awkward—a character that spoke to me immediately. Through the influence of the Astronomer Royal, whom Daniel had met as a teenager, he gains a commission to sail on the First Fleet to New South Wales as official astronomer. In this capacity, he is allowed to build a hut on an isolated promontory, which both relieves him of the chore of dining in the mess, and puts him in a unique position to meet native visitors. He is visited with increasing frequency by a group of prepubescent girls, one of whom, Tagaran, joins eagerly in his game of exchanging words and phrases, until eventually they enter into a relationship of something like friendship, enhanced for Daniel by the excitement of true discovery. Grenville subtly contrasts his approach with that of his friend and senior officer Talbot Silk, who has a book contract waiting on his return to London; while Silk processes everything into prose that would appeal to English tastes, Rooke learns the language as a means of entering a new culture. Eventually, the differences in private attitudes have public consequences; the worlds of the British military and the aborigines inevitably clash, and Daniel Rooke is caught in the middle. On the one side, his new-found friends; on the other, his oath to the King; what can he do?
This is a good book about a serious issue whose consequences are still felt today. It has an attractive protagonist, is written well, and is very easy to read. But it feels slight compared to The Secret River, and is literally only half its length. It tells us less about Australia, and especially lacks the passionate sense of landscape of the earlier book. Most seriously its narrowness of focus, though clarifying the moral picture, quite scants the social context. Both books begin in England, but while Daniel Rooke is just an individual schoolboy, William Thornhill in The Secret River is seen at the center of a Dickensian complex of interlocking districts, trades, and families, spanning classes and generations. Daniel is a bachelor and a bit of a hermit; any sexual attraction between him and Tagaran is understated; but Will Thornhill is a married man with a complex emotional life and a growing family. Daniel lives with words and ideas, which can be hard to make interesting; Will's work is physical, and has the excitement of an adventure story. And at the end, Daniel faces his dilemma alone, but Will acts as part of a group of settlers of different views and backgrounds. Daniel is a man in a private spotlight, Will represents an entire society. This latest book is merely a very good one; the other was a masterpiece.
Kate Grenville has a genius for placing her readers at the heart of a moral dilemma and making us feel it as though it were our own. Unbearably, it is a context whose outcome we already know, where good decisions are virtually impossible; even the most sympathetic characters will be forced by the tide of history to make, or at least condone, decisions that they feel to be morally wrong. In her magnificent previous novel, The Secret River, Grenville fictionalized the life of one of her own ancestors, an early convict settler in New South Wales, able with difficulty to wrest a living from the strange terrain, but ultimately defeated by the problem of coexisting with the aboriginal people. Now in The Lieutenant, she isolates the issue in a clearer spotlight, going back half a generation to fill out the story of a young marine lieutenant, William Dawes, who came to Sydney in 1788 with the First Fleet, and began the first study of the aboriginal tongue.
Daniel Rooke, as the lieutenant is called in this fictional version, is presented as a precocious child but socially awkward—a character that spoke to me immediately. Through the influence of the Astronomer Royal, whom Daniel had met as a teenager, he gains a commission to sail on the First Fleet to New South Wales as official astronomer. In this capacity, he is allowed to build a hut on an isolated promontory, which both relieves him of the chore of dining in the mess, and puts him in a unique position to meet native visitors. He is visited with increasing frequency by a group of prepubescent girls, one of whom, Tagaran, joins eagerly in his game of exchanging words and phrases, until eventually they enter into a relationship of something like friendship, enhanced for Daniel by the excitement of true discovery. Grenville subtly contrasts his approach with that of his friend and senior officer Talbot Silk, who has a book contract waiting on his return to London; while Silk processes everything into prose that would appeal to English tastes, Rooke learns the language as a means of entering a new culture. Eventually, the differences in private attitudes have public consequences; the worlds of the British military and the aborigines inevitably clash, and Daniel Rooke is caught in the middle. On the one side, his new-found friends; on the other, his oath to the King; what can he do?
This is a good book about a serious issue whose consequences are still felt today. It has an attractive protagonist, is written well, and is very easy to read. But it feels slight compared to The Secret River, and is literally only half its length. It tells us less about Australia, and especially lacks the passionate sense of landscape of the earlier book. Most seriously its narrowness of focus, though clarifying the moral picture, quite scants the social context. Both books begin in England, but while Daniel Rooke is just an individual schoolboy, William Thornhill in The Secret River is seen at the center of a Dickensian complex of interlocking districts, trades, and families, spanning classes and generations. Daniel is a bachelor and a bit of a hermit; any sexual attraction between him and Tagaran is understated; but Will Thornhill is a married man with a complex emotional life and a growing family. Daniel lives with words and ideas, which can be hard to make interesting; Will's work is physical, and has the excitement of an adventure story. And at the end, Daniel faces his dilemma alone, but Will acts as part of a group of settlers of different views and backgrounds. Daniel is a man in a private spotlight, Will represents an entire society. This latest book is merely a very good one; the other was a masterpiece.
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