This is the fictional memoir of Elizabeth Macarthur. Raised in Devon, Elizabeth Veale has a hasty marriage to soldier John Macarthur. With her newborn son in tow, she accompanies John and his regiment, to the recently established colony of New South Wales.

Inspired by some of the real letters sent by Elizabeth, it is a candid imagining of her relationship with her husband, and life in the early days of settlement.

I didn't know anything about the Macarthers, and know very little about the early settlers in Australia, so it was an interesting topic for me. I loved the character of Elizabeth but, for an honest and intimate account, I felt like I wanted even more of her thoughts and feelings. I loved the section with Dawes, and felt that was cut too short. And I so wanted to read more about her interactions, treatment of, and relationships with the Indigenous people.

I also loved the Authors Note at the start of the book. I always love it when the author involves themselves in the fiction somehow.

It didn't grip me as much as I'd have liked. Still, a worthwhile and enjoyable read.
4 ⭐s

I have very mixed feelings about this book – I really enjoyed the story about life for the settlers in Sydney’s earliest days, and I really like Kate Grenville’s beautiful and evocative writing style. However, once I realised that the book was about a real woman, Elizabeth MacArthur, I became uncomfortable with the creation of an imagined story and a false legacy.
Indeed one of Grenville’s motivations for writing the book seems to be the fact that the voices of women throughout history tend to be hidden, they leave behind little in the way of documents and diaries and remain largely silent and powerless both in life and in their legacy. Grenville talks about the power of false stories which describe the lives of women and the aboriginal people, but then proceeds to create a false story to overlay on Elizabeth MacArthur, wife of the notorious wool baron John MacArthur. In my view, it would be better to have scant information about Elizabeth than a wealth of imagined facts. Better to have invented this tale around fictional characters than to play with the memory of real people.
Having said that, the story is a good one and if it had been created around a fictional character I would have loved it.
The story is set around the earliest and most brutal days of Sydney, the penal colony, the settlers, and their relationships with each other and with the aboriginal people. Grenville writes powerfully and atmospherically about the scale and beauty of the landscape, and within this larger picture, she weaves a more intimate and fascinating tale of an intelligent woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a cold, clever and dangerous bully as her husband.
It’s a period I know very little about and, while I imagine John MacArthur must be very famous in Australia, I had never heard of him. That said, I found I became completely immersed in this story and the period detail.
While I can’t deny the author’s skill in overlapping fact and fiction, the beauty of her writing, and the cleverness of her tale, I find myself disappointed that, in setting out to make women’s voices heard, Grenville has given Elizabeth a voice, but it’s a made-up one, and I can’t help thinking that’s a little unfair on the real Elizabeth MacArthur, who is left with no more real ‘voice’ than a ventriloquist’s dummy.
With thanks to Netgalley for an advanced publication copy of the book.

Elizabeth Macarthur, the narrator of this book, is definitely one of those people I would invite to a dinner party if I could invite anyone I wanted from any time. She would have many stories to tell although, to quote her words, 'I would not believe too quickly' all that she had to say. She was born in Devon in 1766. At the age of 22 she emigrated to Australia with her husband John and his regiment, where she became the first soldier's wife to settle in New South Wales. Kate Grenville's fictional story of Elizabeth's life is written as if from Elizabeth's own papers although this is merely a way of telling the tale. However it has clearly been thoroughly researched and in addition to providing the story of one woman it gives the reader insight into late 18th/early 19th century Australia, the treatment of the Aboriginal peoples by white settlers, the development of sheep farming and the relationship between the British in Australia and the British government in London. The book makes clear that Elizabeth's husband was a very ambitious man with mental health problems. He is often credited as being the founder of the Australian wool industry but Grenville postulates that in fact Elizabeth had a much bigger role to play than John in the success of sheep farming in Australia. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about a character whom I had never heard of before and a time I did not know a great deal about. I really appreciated the way in which Grenville showed Elizabeth as a strong minded woman who was able to use both spoken and written language to meet her own needs despite the difficulties of her life with John Macarthur. I am now keen to read more by the author. I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher, Canongate, via Net Galley, in return for an honest review.

Elizabeth Veale makes a hasty but necessary marriage to John Macarthur. Macarthur is cold and ambitious, and his sole aim is to do whatever it takes to rise to the top and shake off the shame of his family background in trade. Now in debt from having purchased his commission, he sees a chance of promotion in joining the New South Wales Corps, formed to guard the convict colony newly established there.
Elizabeth is powerless at the hands of her bullying husband but avoids despair by attempting to ‘outwit and outwait’ this damaged man and survive by playing him at his own long game.
A Room made of Leaves is Kate Grenville’s own fleshing out of the little that is known of Elizabeth MacArthur’s life. Written in Elizabeth’s voice and based on her journal apparently uncovered after her death, it is a quiet and cautious account. Always alert to the deviousness of her husband and his ability to destroy them both, this becomes the focus. The backdrop of the sufferings of the convicts and the indigenous peoples displaced from their lands is here. There are many of the beautifully descriptive pieces at which this writer excels. But this is Elizabeth Macarthur’s writing and her main concern is the endurance of life within her loveless marriage.
This novel is a beautifully balanced and captivating book. Elizabeth finds the gift of love in unlikely places and works out how to discourage unwanted attentions by feigning dullness at others. But mainly she learns the art of steering her manipulative husband into less treacherous waters than he plans.

My thanks to Canongate, Kate Grenville and NetGalley for the ARC of A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES.
A very interesting rendition of life as a new settler in New South Wales. An intriguing tale of modern thinking at a time when women were far from emancipation. Very different. I loved it.

Elizabeth MacArthur, young and with few prospects in the late 1700s, finds herself married to a bully, and en route to Australia where her new husband is to be captain in one of the penal colonies, and aspires to make his fortune.

The characters are real, and John MacArthur was clearly well known in Australian history. The story is told in the voice of Elizabeth, giving an interesting and intimate female perspective to a hard yet often exciting life.

As you'd imagine, a woman's role is to support her husband and provide children - but Elizabeth's words give us more insight into the emotional highs and lows, and where and how she can find solace.

The characters are well fleshed out and vivid, the scenery described beautifully. I didn't see the twist at the end coming (although really I should have!), it was a nice touch. Could not put this down.

Fictional account of the early life of Elizabeth MacArthur, one of the early figures in the Australian wool trade. Like a lot of women of her generation very little is known of her but Grenville has woven a fascinating tale of the events that might have led her from poor Devonian farmer’s daughter to the wife of soldier who became a wealthy Australian wool baron. Forced into a loveless marriage with John McArthur a man of quick temper and an obsession with rising in society at any cost, she knows she must use all her cunning to manage his erratic behaviour and fit into the new world they are carving out for themselves in Australia. Excellent historical fiction showing the lives of the early Australian settlers in particular the near invisibility of women and more poignantly at a time of BLM protests, the appalling treatment of the indigenous Australians who Elizabeth quickly realises know a lot more intelligent than the settlers give them credit for.

As a schoolchild in Australia, the name of John Macarthur was one of the many I learned by rote as part of the telling of our country’s history. It never occurred to any of us that he must have had a wife and this wonderful romp through Elizabeth’s perspective on the early years of the colony is hugely enjoyable. The story is not without tragedy, grim reality or emotional extremes, but it is utterly compelling and real, and conveys the characters of Elizabeth and her volatile, pompous, rather ridiculous husband brilliantly. The skill of Kate Grenville in blending this mixture of some fact and much fiction is to be marvelled at and the writing style is vivid and often beautiful. This is very likely to be my book of the year!

It is eight years since we have had a new novel from Kate Grenville; far too long in my opinion. Her last offering was Sarah Thornhill, the third in the trilogy centred around the Thornhill family and the early years of the Australian colony that grew up as a result of the convict settlement in New South Wales.  In A Room Made of Leaves Grenville returns to those early difficult years to tell the story of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur who is apparently credited with establishing the antipodean sheep industry, building up a breed capable of providing quality wool for the European market. History tells us that Macarthur was a very difficult man, constantly at odds with those around him and forced to return to England twice, for four and then nine years, to face judgement in the courts of law. How then, Grenville asks, was such a man, always slant, guarded, sly, evasive, able to not only craft out a viable farm from inhospitable surroundings, but also carry out the skilled task of interbreeding animals capable of surviving and indeed thriving in an alien landscape? Is it not more probably the case, she posits, that his wife, brought up among sheep farming and instructed in the business of breeding by her grandfather, was the more likely partner to have possessed the necessary acumen to drive the venture forward?

The novel purports to be a recording of papers belonging to Elizabeth Macarthur and found many years after her death. In a series of short passages she describes her early life in Devon, the death of her father, the resulting time spent on her grandfather’s farm, and her friendship with Bridie the daughter of the local minister.  As a result of this friendship, Elizabeth goes to live with the Kingdon family and once she learns that it would be best for me not to be too clever, she fits in very well until such a time as it becomes apparent that she and Bridie both look fit to be left “on the shelf“. Onto the scene comes John Macarthur, an ensign on half pay. The phrase was a byword for failure. Elizabeth falls pregnant and finds herself married to a man whose every fibre was held together by pride, who boasted that he had never yet failed in ruining a man who had become obnoxious to him. In order to escape a monstrous debt, Macarthur signs on with the New South Wales Corps and Elizabeth finds herself, with only her maid, Anne, for company, embarked on a six month voyage to Australia.

Once they have landed, they are located in the same territory, both literally and figuratively, that Grenville covered in her novel The Lieutenant. The colony is limited in the extreme and Elizabeth finds herself not only without the basic comforts of life from a material point of view, but also lacking any sort of company that might bring her relief.

I met there a cold indifferent truth: that every person – even a loved person, and I was not loved – was alone.
Eventually, she discovers companionship in the person of William Dawes, the astronomer sent out to map the southern night sky, and through him she makes the acquaintance of some of the first inhabitants of Australia, people that, uniquely among the colonists, Dawes is trying to understand and communicate with. It is Dawes who teaches her to observe the world around her and to value and appreciate what the land has to offer. Consequently, when she and her husband, accompanied by their servants Agnes Brown and the sheep-stealer, William Hannaford, move inland to Parramatta and establish a smallholding, Elizabeth is the one who is aware enough of the land and the potential of the livestock they have brought with them to be able to derive a profit from their situation.  Nevertheless, her life continues to be one of loneliness and extreme watchfulness, knowing that she must weigh every word she says to her husband who persists in seeing insults everywhere.

When I realised that Grenville was exploring the life of a real and documented individual, I made what I now think was a mistake in doing some background reading about Elizabeth Macarthur before I started the book. As a result, I was expecting the author to deal with Elizabeth’s life through the years during which John was back in England in the same detail that she does those early years when they are establishing themselves in Australia and was disappointed when this wasn’t the case. Up until that point I was enjoying the book very much, but, possibly because of my earlier reading, I felt that it came to a perfunctory ending. Indeed, as I realised I was coming close to the final pages I initially assumed that this was going to be the first of a new trilogy. I was also bothered by the way in which Grenville latterly has Elizabeth thinking in much more detail about the atrocities meted out to the first inhabitants. I know this is something that has exercised her considerably during the past couple of decades and indeed there is a preface to the book recognising the rights of the tribes to the land under discussion, but the sudden change in emphasis feels forced, almost like an afterthought and I found that disturbing.

So, in general a book that I very much enjoyed, but one that I felt was let down by its last few pages. I would still recommend that you read it. Grenville couldn’t write a bad sentence if she tried and Elizabeth’s struggle to forge a life with a man for whom she can feel nothing but contempt is beautifully portrayed, just be prepared for a bit of a jolt as it reaches its conclusion.

With thanks to Cannongate and NetGalley for the review copy.

This is very reminiscent of The Secret River and like that book tells the story of the beginnings of Australia, this time from the point of view of a woman, Elizabeth MacArthur, a real woman living at the time. Kate Grenville takes some letters she wrote as the starting point and tells the story of Elizabeth's life in first person narration, beginning from her childhood in Devon through an unhappy marriage to a damaged bullying man and a move to Sydney.

It is a gripping read, and I finished it in one sitting. The point of view of a woman trapped in the constraints of her time as well as a difficult marriage is well drawn, and there are lyrical accounts of the beauty of the Australian countryside as well as of the horrors of early settlement. The guilt of the white settlers is also highlighted, as in The Secret River, in their treatment of the native people. Elizabeth's acknowledgement of this and of her own culpability feels very modern and anachronistic. I'd be interested to know if this view was expressed at all at the time.

Overall I'd recommend this book, thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

This is historical fiction at its best. This is a really emotional and beautiful read about one women’s journey to Australia. It’s a very honest and brutal story in many ways but it is told at the same time with humour, humility and understanding. It shines a light on what life would have been like for a woman in the early days of the settlement in Australia and the relationship between the early settlers and the Aboriginal people. It is a really evocative piece of fiction that is inspired by the real letters of Elizabeth Macarthur and by the things that she they didn’t say.

Elizabeth like many young girls finds herself excited by the possibilities of a new life with a young soldier when she meets John Macarthur but she soon realises that the reality is not what she expected. Her new husband Is a difficult man always following a new dream and devising a new scheme which sees her eventually in New South Wales as John takes up a position as Lieutenant at a penal colony. She arrives to find Sydney a very brutal and forlorn place. As Elizabeth learns to adjust to her new surroundings and life with her husband she discovers new strengths and desires she never imagined.

The usual mistake in a young woman's life leads to a marriage of unhappiness. But one where Mrs McArthur survives and even prospers. The story of a voyage to Australia and the early years of settlement. It's a really well written, thought out and sensitive book seen from Mrs McArthurs point of view. My only gripe is that I wish it had continued to her years of self agency, rather than stopping as it did.

‘A Room Made of Leaves’ is a fictional account of the actual Elizabeth Macarthur who travelled to New South Wales with her soldier husband and infant son in 1790. From these inauspicious and hazardous beginnings, she became instrumental in setting up and managing the Australian wool industry. However, this novel mentions comparatively little of what Elizabeth is best remembered for, focusing more on her ability to adapt to life in what is very much a man’s world.
Elizabeth is a sympathetic woman who can see behind the crude labels of ‘convict’ and ‘native’. She is intelligent, inquisitive and resilient. Through her Kate Grenville paints a portrait of a successful dissembler. She learns to present herself as inferior and biddable in order to manage her difficult husband’s moods and wayward plans so that she might carve out a purposeful and satisfying life for herself far away from friends and family. Her ‘room made of leaves’ is as necessary to her as Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’: a peaceful haven giving her time for thought and where she can be truly herself.
Interested in the culture of the indigenous people whose land the British are appropriating, and sensitive to the treatment of who live near her sheep farm, gradually Elizabeth faces up to the fact that, ‘Like most of the other newcomers, in the past I never gave a proper name to what I was doing…I have been a thief for every one of those forty years.’ She understands that her acknowledgement of her ignorant behaviour ‘repairs no part of the sorrow of it, I know. But it is the first thing, the first hard truth, without which no repair can ever be hoped for.’
This is an engaging novel, perhaps particularly so for those who have an interest in Australia’s early history. But to read it as merely an approximation of history would be a mistake. It is the business of the ways in which truth is presented, that we can suggest much through a well-crafted phrase or represent facts in a way to benefit the teller, that this story comes back to time and time again. Elizabeth and the servant convicts working for her do not have the luxury of saying what they really think. She is as much subjugated by her husband as are they. Nevertheless, that she is able to grow a thriving business from scant beginnings in such a tough environment is a celebration of the human spirit as well as Grenville’s tribute to a remarkable woman.
My thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

What do you do when you realise you’ve made a marriage mistake? It’s too late to reverse the situation, even more so when your new husband insists you travel with him from England to New South Wales. Elizabeth is pregnant and alone, and arrives in Australia feeling lost and afraid. But can a new country, and a new continent, offer another way of looking at things? I love that Kate’s story was inspired by real life and found it to be an intense read, and one I was the better for having read.
Thank you to Netgalley for an advance reading copy.

A Room Made of Leaves is an intriguing novel about a fascinating period in Australian history.

I love the concept of a fictional memoir, adapted from notes and letters, but the narrative quickly falls away from this form. Elizabeth is not the most engaging protagonist: at times she is intelligent and perceptive, at others she seems completely blind to the world around her. It almost feels like she is holding readers at a distance, or at least those without prior knowledge of her world.

A Room Made of Leaves is an interesting character study, and there are some brilliant insights into the big personalities of the time. There are some beautiful passages, and I loved the exploration of how a woman of those times might forge her own destiny. I just wish I'd gotten more of a sense of place and history.

Elizabeth Macarthur was the wife of an Australian settler John Macarthur, who sailed to Sydney in the late 1700s. History credits John Macarthur as the man responsible for the establishment of Merino wool farming in Australia. However, records also show that he was absent from the country for long years during the formation of the farm and resulting business, suggesting that it may well have been his resourceful and long-suffering wife Elizabeth, originally from a sheep farming family in Devon herself, who was the driving force in their success. History conveniently airbrushing females from the patriarchal credits.

Kate Grenville fictitiously reimagines proceedings, claiming to have come into possession of a bundle of memoirs written by Elizabeth Macarthur, discovered during the renovation of a historic Sydney house. The book is written as a series of short journal-type entries.

However, it is not apparent until the end of the book that the memoirs were never found and that the author didn’t simply re-edit, but actually made it all up, albeit featuring real characters and events from historical records of the early settlement of the colony. I suppose as a result I felt a little cheated and would have preferred to know that it was a work of fiction at the outset.

Nevertheless, being fascinated by Australian history, I enjoyed the book and actually Kate Grenville’s conjecture of how Elizabeth Macarthur may have lived her life. There were times when I felt the story was a bit stifled and i I get frustrated by the subservience, but then have to remember the severe constraints of the era, but generally found it interesting and food for thought.

This historical novel features a heroine I grew to like but I felt it hard to get to know her as the story skimmed the surface of her life only centering on certain aspects.
The setting was good, the style literary but somehow I was left feeling unsatisfied, there just wasn't enough intimate detail to make me feel I'd really experienced the story, just watched it from the sidelines. It is also very similar to some of the authors previous works, offering a different viewpoint but not sufficiently unique to stand out.
I also found the way conversation was written with no punctuation marks and - he said, I said interspersed throughout jarred with me and prevented the story flowing as well as I'd have hoped.
A good read, but a little lacking in substance and feeling.

A woman from Devon makes one mistake and ends up marrying a man she does not like, and having to move to Australia with him. This book tells her story as she settles in New South Wales, learns to manage her husband and makes a life for herself and her children in the colony.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Sydney, the homestead and the politics of the early settlers. This period of history is a favourite with Kate Grenville. Fans may feel that they are in familiar territory as some of the characters and scenarios have previously made appearances in 'The Secret River' however sometimes we all need a friendly comfort blanket, and this is an enjoyable, well written and laid out read. A female perspective adds a different view on the men's scheming and how they dealt with the native people.

The name, John McArthur, of Camden Park Estate in New South Wales, means nothing to me but the introduction to this book suggests that he’s famous, or perhaps infamous, in Australia. Kate Grenville has written a fictional account of his and his wife’s lives with Elizabeth McArthur, his wife, as the story teller. As always, there are many short passages of beautiful writing. Grenville’s descriptions of nature and landscape are often profoundly beautiful. As always, I enjoyed her style of writing. In this book, the story is in 5 parts split into very short sections, like mini chapters and is a quick and easy read.

Having said all this, I feel so disappointed. Very little of this story is new ground for Grenville. The early years in Sydney, the lives of settlers, those there by choice and those not, and their relationships with the First Nation peoples, the living conditions, and the work of the astronomer and botanist, William Dawes, have already been covered in The Secret River and particularly in The Lieutenant. So much of the middle part of the book is about William Dawes, I felt I was re-reading <i>The Lieutenant</i>. For that reason, I can only just give this 3 stars. It was enjoyable but it lacks originality. I can’t help but wonder why Grenville decided to revisit a period of history she has already written so fully about. Perhaps if I hadn’t read The Secret River trilogy, I would have enjoyed it more.

With thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for a review copy.