This is the first I have read by Kate Grenville, it certainly will not be the last, this powerful and hauntingly beautiful book is mind-blowing good. A must-read for anyone who loves their historical's edged with raw emotion., A definite must-read!

There’s no question that this is a beautifully written novel from a very talented author. Some of the description is absolutely wonderful and there’s such a clear sense of time and place.

The opening chapters, describing Elizabeth’s childhood, worked the best for me, and the Elizabeth in these chapters felt very real and fully drawn.

Once the narrative moves to Australia, the novel didn’t work quite so well for me. I did feel that Elizabeth was a little too good to be true and that the portrayal of her husband was a bit superficial. I would have liked a bit more detail about the dynamics of their relationship, and also some more detail about the daily hardships of life in the new settlement. This aspect, in particular, was very glossed over. It must have been absolutely brutal, but it doesn’t really feel that way.

I think too, that, while there certainly is acknowledgement of the cruelty to the indigenous people of the area, this could have been more fully detailed. And is it really believable that Elizabeth would have been so enlightened, that she would have recognized that the immigrants from England were stealing land and food and lives from others?

That said, the book did leave me wanting to know more about the real Elizabth Macarthur, and it was, on the whole, a book that I’m glad to have read.

'A Room Made of Leaves', seems a little bit of a departure for her. It is (not surprisingly) about early settlers in Australia but it is written almost in the style of an 18th century novel, using the conceit of a series of ‘discovered’ letters and journal entries, rather than being a ‘straightforward’ historical novel. But the important thing is the prose is distinctly Grenville, and as always, almost entirely believable. As much as I enjoyed the form of this novel (and it may just be me) I prefer the purity of Kate Grenville’s voice, rather than hearing it through the filter of the narrator’s journaling. There are also just a couple of points where the narrator’s take on an occurrence feels a little modern for the supposed time of writing, and to be honest, I found this a little jarring, due only to the perfection and absolute authenticity I expect of this author.

This is very nearly classic Grenville and has all the poise and pacing you would expect, however, the final section actually feels a little rushed; I would have been happy to remain longer in the company of the narrator, rather than having an epilogue to tell the end of the story.

Kate Grenville is genuinely, one of my favourite authors and this is an excellent book, but I am glad it was not the first of the author’s I had read. 'A Room Made of Leaves' is well worth your time but when the rest of an author’s output is simply stunning, even excellent feels somehow slightly disappointing.

However, my complaints are in reality minor quibbles and do not detract from the book; 'A Room Made of Leaves' is still head and shoulders above virtually any other historical novel you should choose to put it up against.

I adore historical fiction but for some reason, this book couldn't retain my interest and was a real slog to get to the end. The beginning was great, and I had high hopes but was ultimately let down.

A clever re-examination of a historical character. Kate Grenville gives Elizabeth MacArthur a rich inner life that contradicts the blandness of her letters home to England from Australia in the early colonial years, Grenville shows real awareness to the violence inflicted on the indigenous population, their beliefs and culture and it is this massive injustice that lingers in the mind after finishing the novel.

When she is 21, a moment’s dalliance in a bush forces orphan Elizabeth to marry soldier John Macarthur. The story of their marriage in 1788, journey to the colony of Australia on board a convict ship and life in the new settlement called Sydney Town, is told in ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ by Kate Grenville.
Elizabeth was a real woman but little is known of her, though her husband features in Australia’s history books as the British army officer who became a politician, legislator and pioneer of the Australian wool industry. Grenville is free to imagine what life must have been like as a white settler, and a woman, in a rough, uncultured town where the native people are viewed as animals.
Very quickly Elizabeth finds her new husband is a bully and her new home is a brutal, unforgiving, judgmental place. She spends much time alone with her sickly son and survives by disguising how clever she is, particularly from her husband. More children quickly follow and she bonds more with the convicts who work for her as servants, than she does with the wives of her husband’s friends. An outlier, she decides to improve her learning and seeks lessons on astronomy from an officer in her husband’s corps. What follows changes her understanding of her new country and her place in it.
The pacing seems at times off kilter, a trifle slow in places and rushed at the end, but the writing is as beautiful as I remember from Grenville’s earlier books. Of the book’s two halves, I wanted less of the first half and more of the second about Elizabeth’s role in developing breeds of sheep suited to the wool trade.
Essentially this is a delicately-written story of a young woman who, after making one mistake, is trapped in a loveless marriage far away from her Devon home. She learns how to manage her husband without him realising he is being managed, she tempers his outburst and steers him out of trouble. Perhaps this fictional account of Elizabeth’s life will mean more to Australians who have grown-up with the historical story of the real John Macarthur.
A good read but not my favourite Grenville book.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Weaving a woollen garment of narrative spare known facts : Elizabeth MacArthur 18th Century Pioneer

The Wiki page of the life of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of a soldier who set sail for Sydney as part of the 2nd Fleet, is sparse but intriguing. It is no wonder that Australian novelist Kate Grenville (author of The Secret River) should have been intrigued and inspired to want to put flesh on the somewhat bland details of the life of this woman, as the known facts hint at many depths. All those facts do appear in Grenville’s book, but the story, and the woman are given flesh which may (or indeed, equally may not) be founded in her reality. The account Macarthur herself left in her letters do not reveal much and seem to hide as much as they might show. Excerpts from those real letters appear in the book, and Grenville imagines behind their somewhat conventional expressions

I very much surrendered to the telling of the story of Elizabeth up to the point where her husband made his first enforced trip back to England to face a court martial for wounding a superior officer in a duel.

However, Elizabeth’s linear story abruptly ceases at that point, and we jump forward to a look back on her life, from her 83rd year, the last year of her life. Although there is beautiful writing here, outlining a pantheistic relationship with the landscape and a deeply respectful acknowledgement of the wrongdoings done to the First Nation by the greedy depredations of the white settlers, grabbing land which was not theirs, and arrogantly dismissing the native population in the way which white colonials have ever done, this reads in a different voice. It obviously is – the voice of a twentyfirst century author with the sensibilities of today, able to look back on clear wrongdoings.

I am sure there were always people living through history’s crimes, who argued against the common view that those not like us were lesser, Elizabeth Macarthur might have been one who had a view which is more acceptable to the more enlightened thinking hopefully more of us have in the twentyfirst century, but I did feel somewhat taken out of time, place and history by this beautifully written section

An untraditional take on the life of the woman now credited with developing the Australian sheep farming industry. Very enjoyable, but I had to suspend my disbelief here and there.

An lovely read that I'm glad to have discovered. I'll definitely be seeking out more by this author.

This is historical fiction telling the story of the Macarthurs, Elizabeth and John Macarthur, who settled in Australia at the end of the eighteenth century. It’s based on the real lives of the Macarthurs using letters, journals and official documents of the early years of the New South Wales colony. But, although based on fact this is not history, it is fiction, as Kate Grenville makes clear in her Author’s Note at the end of the book (which I read after I read the opening paragraphs of the Editor’s Note at the start of the book).

I’ve enjoyed all of the books by Kate Grenville that I’ve read so far. Her writing suits me – historical fiction, straight-forward story-telling, with good descriptive writing setting the scenes vividly in their locations. I find her books difficult to put down and they stay in my mind long after I’ve finished reading. This one is no exception.

It begins in Devon where Elizabeth was born and grew up, first with her parents and then after her father died on her grandfather’s sheep farm and then with the local vicar’s family, whose daughter, Bridie is her friend. There she meets John Macarthur, an ensign. When she becomes pregnant they marry and then he tells her he has signed on as a lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps in the penal colony at Sydney Cove. But their married life is not a happy one. John was rash, impulsive, changeable, self-deceiving, and given to embarking on grandiose schemes. He was quick to take offence and was dangerously unbalanced. Over the course of their marriage he was forced to return to England twice, at first for four years and later for nine. During that time Elizabeth made the best of life, carrying on with their sheep farm at Parramatta, where she improved the flock, and helped to establish New South Wales as a reliable supplier of quality wool.

One of the outstanding parts of the book for me is her relationship with William Dawes, an astronomer with the Corps, who was mapping the night sky. He had an observatory near Elizabeth’s farm and it was there that she met some of the local inhabitants and learned a bit of their language and about their ways of life. And it is with William that Elizabeth learns to appreciate not just the night sky, but also the landscape and its flora and fauna and in particular the ‘room made of leaves’ – a private space enclosed on three sides by greenery, a place where you could simply be yourself.

This is a book that captivated me from the opening paragraphs, and there is so much more in it than I have mentioned in this post. It gave me much to think about, in particular bearing in mind the epigraph, an actual quotation from one of Elizabeth’s letters: Believe not too quickly, reminding me that this is a work of fiction. I enjoyed it immensely. And it makes me want to know more about the Macarthurs. I came across Michelle Scott Tucker’s biography: Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World and I was delighted to see that Kate Grenville references this book as the standard biography in her Acknowledgements. It is now on my wishlist!

If you like historical fiction you will love this book. Well written and well researched. A great read with a real heart.

A beautifully written story that follows the story of a young woman who makes a common mistake in marrying the wrong man, which inevitably leads to a marriage filled with unhappiness. However, Mrs McArthur survives and even prospers in her new life.
This historical fiction then takes us along on a voyage to Australia, and the earlier years of settlement there.
This book is wonderful and truly fascinating, full of detail and also sensitive in its portrayal of the story.
A must read for all historical fiction lovers.

The writing itself was enjoyable, but I found the plot a little old fashioned. I confess I didn’t make it all the way through the book, the characters seemed a little naive and I was struggling to connect with them.

Based on real events and sensitively reading between the lines of official documentation, Kate Grenville conjures a completely convincing version of Elizabeth Macarthur's life and the fictions she created herself in her letters to ensure her survival. A beautifully written historical recreation which engages throughout. I read it in one sitting.

This book tells a fictionalised story of an actual historical figure, Elizabeth McArthur who after a lapse in judgment ended up married to an unfavourable character, John McArthur. Her husband is ambitious and ruthless but Elizabeth who is well educated is more than a match for him. Shortly after their marriage, they set sail for a colony in New South Wales and join the settlement in Sydney. Here, Mr McArthur continues to be unsatisfied with his life and seeks power and wealth, and Elizabeth provides a unique female perspective on the situation in this new land alongside the newly arrived settlers, where the natives are treated as inferior and forced off their land.
This story is beautifully written and brings to life a voice of a woman who has previously been overshadowed in the world of men. She feels a connection with the native women from the surrounding tribes and this gives her an almost modern perspective on the treatment of these people.
Overall, I enjoyed this story and its almost slow pace throughout, it’s not a tale full of drama or plot twists but well written and I really liked Elizabeth as a character, she was clever and witty. However, I did feel that the final 10% felt rushed especially after the calm pace of the rest of the book. A lot of events were mentioned in the last few pages but quickly glossed over, such as her eldest son being sent away to school in England and I would have liked to have heard more about these people and events as the character was reflecting on her life in her old age.

I'd never heard of John MacArthur, an early settler of the colony of New South Wales, and an Australian 'worthy.' This story is an imagining of the life of his wife, Elisabeth, told in her words. MacArthur is compulsively argumentative, a schemer, and ruthlessly ambitious. Elisabeth marries him because she has no option, and decides to make the best of her bad lot by learning to manage him. From debt-ridden poverty in Engand, the MacArthurs rise to prosperity in the brave new world of Australia.
A Room Made of Leaves is about a marriage and the relationship between the sexes, and also about colonialism, complicity, and our relationship to the land. It's a compelling read, and one I very much enjoyed.

A Room Made of Leaves is the fictionalised account of a real woman’s life – Elizabeth Macarthur. It’s set in the late 18th century. Women had few prospects beyond marriage, so when Elizabeth marries the cold, ambitious John Macarthur she has little choice but to follow him wherever he decides to go, even if that’s to the other side of the world to live in a new settlement in Australia. A must for historical fiction fans.

What a wonderful sweeping and lyrical novel. The main character, Elizabeth, is a woman for all times. This is more than just a historical novel, it is a coming of age story and an examination of women in the world that transcends time and place. A really beautiful book.

In 'A Room Made of Leaves' Kate Grenville ingeniously re-imagines the life of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in 18th Century Australia.

Macarthur is a brave woman, married to a ruthless bully, but she manages to subvert the stultifying social restrictions of her time to forge her own path and follow her own heart. This is a moving story of one woman's struggle to survive in the early, brutal days of Australia's colonisation. Secrets and lies and false history abound, but Grenville skilfully weaves a tale of truth and honesty, told through Macarthur's clever, courageous eyes.

'A Room Made of Leaves' is Grenville's first novel in almost a decade. Well worth waiting for!

This is based on real events. I had no familiarity with the true story of Elizabeth and John Macarthur so had no expectations for this book. The book is written as if someone has stumbled across a box of long hidden letters and journals by Elizabeth and used them to piece together her remarkable story. This is a nice touch. I really enjoyed this book, which focuses on Elizabeth’s life before and during her marriage and after her husband’s death. The book uses a fist person narrator from Elizabeth’s POV. I prefer this POV as it helps me to get close to the character and its spot on here. Elizabeth goes through a lot, becoming much stronger across the course of the book. I enjoyed being so close to her and seeing how she develops. I’ve never rad the author before but need to seek out more of her work.