This was a five star read right up until the final 10%. The voice of Elizabeth Macarthur feels really authentic and the descriptions of scenes and events throughout her life are beautifully written.

My only niggle is that everything is developed so fully for the majority of the book, with the audience seeing how various moments in her life drive her to where she is but then there is such a rushed ending to close it all off. From the opening element we know Mr Macarthur is going to be sent back to England at some point - by 95% of the way in this still hasn't happened though. And then we are given the last forty years of her life in a single chapter. I found this slightly disappointing.

I would still recommend as a nice read though

Absorbing, compelling and fascinating - I loved this book! Kate Grenville's fictional account is based on the real life of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of the more well known John Macarthur, an influential figure in the colonisation of New South Wales. Elizabeth is forced to marry quickly after falling pregnant and then is whisked away, the first soldier's wife to arrive in New South Wales. Her new life is a huge contrast to her previous one, being tough and testing. We learn how she makes the most of it, how she manages her difficult, bullish husband and ultimately how she makes a success of her life there and makes it her home. Thank you to Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This wonderful book with the focus being on Elizabeth MacArthur had me wondering whether it was a work of fiction or memoir! The characterisation drew me in from the first page leaving me so engaged with this incredible woman’s life, so wonderfully written and imagined by Kate Grenville.

I sometimes find it difficult to engage with novels about real woman as they project false goings-on in their life yet I loved how the author strategically gives forgotten women of history a clear and loud voice.

I also enjoyed learning some Australian history as it’s not a topic I’m familiar with. Some flaws within the novel with pacing and dramatisation of specific events but overall one that I would recommend.

How to start this review? First, let me explain that I did not finish #ARoomMadeOfLeaves but as Netgalley requires a ranking, I base this on the 37% I tortured myself to read.

It seems quite a number of people rate this book highly but I can't be so generous.

Grenville, writing in The Guardian in 2020 states Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of the less than pleasant John Macarthur would have been more than the sum of her letters home to family & friends. "From the letters she left, our picture of her is of the perfect wife: uncomplaining, devout, unfailingly cheerful. Yawn." I do enjoy a feminist retelling of a story but then we get to the self-imposed references to Jane Austen & the shared irony of their writing & things get a little wobbly. Grenville, in the same article, tells us the book had a working title of Do Not Believe Too Quickly & in a world of misinformation, this is sage advice, however, this is itself, a fake history. The telling is a glorified 21st century, rose-tinted glasses version of a real woman's life. This is why I don't read biographies or autobiographies - it is far too easy to be dishonest.

The earliest parts of this book, set in England, could be anywhere. There is nothing recognisably English or of the period. I can't comment on the Australian portion as I couldn't push myself to read that far. The feeling I do have, however, is Grenville has, in this book, created another situation, such as that occurred with The Secret River. Inga Clendinnen highlights how "the ways in which history, myth and fiction differ from one another, and why the differences are important" & I feel Grenville doesn't understand this.

Emma, on Goodreads, writes that John is cast as an irredeemable man, & he may well have been & that Elizabeth is reconstructed as a modern feminist, utterly capable of dealing with our 2021 world. In Grenville's style, readers are not challenged to engage with real people, during a real period of time, who are products of their era. I feel that A Room Made of Leaves is fiction from a specific generation & we need to challenge this when we find it.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Canongate for an Arc of this.
Kate Grenville writes a book which is a combination of fact and fiction, inspired by letters written by Elizabeth MacArthur. The letters have been exaggerated and expanded in order to great this novel and make them more interesting to read.

I found the overall book quite underwhelming and not what I expected. I was hoping for a solid historical fiction but it was not like that at all. I feel like she has idolised the main character Elizabeth to make it sound good and glorify her, which I feel for historical fiction can ruin it abit as it isn't realistic. No one is perfect .

There is alot of description and detail of what's happening that I feel like it drowns the story and you get lost in it.
I wanted to know the characters more and get more indepth details of what they were like and more detail of the relationships between the MacArthurs and everyone around them.
It also felt like the perspective kept changing which again didn't help me enjoy the book.

I listened to the audiobook along side and I found the readers quite dreary which didn't help me to enjoy this.

I struggled to finish, but I read that it gets better as you read and that it has a slow start.

I found the book abit slow and hard to get into but I did plunge myself through and got to the end. It was interesting to found out it was based on a true story so I did look up the characters and there life.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.

I am really sorry but I could not finish this book it did not appeal to me and I found it quite boring I only got to 20%.

A Room Made of Leaves is a fabulous blend of fact and fiction, inspired by the letters written by Elizabeth Macarthur to her family and friends in England. It was a reasonably engaging story, although I felt somewhere in the middle it took a dip and didn't fully recover. I enjoyed the characters but thought there could have been a little more depth given all the potential the story had. However, Kate Greenville is a great author and I'd be happy to read her next story.

A Room Made of Leaves gives a revealing, disturbing, surprising and, at times, heartwarming glimpse into Elizabeth Macarthur's life. Here we see what she may have been thinking and feeling, and how she coped with relocating, grief, stress, and her infamous colonist husband. It also shows the complexities of being a (British) woman in the eighteenth century. In particular, it highlights the double standards shown by the men around her, many of which are, sadly, still relevant today.

Broadly, this is a story of the life and actions of British colonists in New South Wales; it's a judgement on James Macarthur and his ilk, certainly, but it also shows men like Dawes with their more reassuring, though still problematic, relations with indigenous people.

As a British reader, I believe it's important to read accounts that show a more truthful record of that time, no matter how shameful they may be. Grenville relays some horrific events here, and Elizabeth's tale reveals how inaccurately these were portrayed to those in Britain, including the government. Disturbing indeed.

Elizabeth Macarthur goes some way to balance this out, with her wit and self-awareness and kind curiosity. Most importantly, she acknowledges her own role in the claiming of land that was not hers to call home. This is particularly relevant to today, as society increasingly acknowledges aboriginal people, their heritage and their suffering. This book has the power to increase that even further.

There's a twist to this tale, though, that I won't spoil here, but it did disappoint me a little. Nonetheless, this book is beautifully written, even when the subject matter is far from beautiful. I couldn't stop reading it. Highly recommend.

Thank you for the opportunity to read 'A Room Made of Leaves'.

I was captivated by this book and loved reading of the life of Elizabeth Macarthur - from a girl in England to a strong and capable women during Australia's early settlement by the British. The writing is beautiful and the detail of Elizabeth's life is captivating. As an Australian living in England who visited Elizabeth Farm Cottage in my childhood, I felt a connection and ''relied' the history I was taught in school.

I wish the book had continued on giving more information about the success of the sheep farming and the lives of her children. I have to admit, I felt let down at the end but can still recognise the tale for what it is.

This is the first book I’ve read from Kate Grenville but I doubt will be my last. A well written blend of fact with fiction and thoroughly enjoyable. Will definitely be recommending.

Thanks to Canongate for letting me read Kate Grenville's A Room Full of Leaves in advance. This is the fictionalised story of Elizabeth Macarthur, who was one of the first settlers in Sydney in the late eighteenth century. I enjoyed this one overall - I read it mostly during plane and Tube journeys, and the tiny chapters really worked for me in those particular settings (which are often very distracting!). I really liked the first half, which did a brilliant job of showing the difficulties of being married to someone you don't love and barely even respect, but once they move to Sydney, I felt like A Room Full of Leaves lost a lot of dramatic impetus. The shocking events (murder and decimation of the Aboriginal people) and the mundane events alike are delivered with zero dramatic tension, and there was a lot mentioned in the introduction to Elizabeth's life that barely even cropped up in the actual narrative. Definitely not a favourite for me, which is a shame.

I'm finding it tricky to put into words how I feel about this book. I, perhaps foolishly, believed the author's note at the beginning, and felt that the book was therefore written appropriately. The short chapters and fast pace make it feel as if you are sitting beside Elizabeth while she tells you her story, and for that strong evocation Grenville should be applauded.

When viewed this way, this novel is a triumph, a blend of fact and fiction with a keen focus on the main character, Elizabeth herself. So many women have been lost in the shadows of men, and there's nothing I love more than a story which brings those forgotten women into the light.

Elizabeth Macarthur is a passionate woman managing her complicated life-marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her own heart, the search for power in a society that gave her none-with spirit, cunning and sly wit.

This is the story of a woman making the best she can from an unfortunate marriage at a time when there was no escape; it is also the story of the first and cruel colonisation of the country and the establishment of the penal colony. I was sad when it was over but simultaneously felt deeply satisfied. There are not many authors able to properly write an ending but Kate Grenville did a great job. Highly recommended both as literature and a good story.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Absolutely fantastic read. I have loved this and been completely unable and unwilling to put this one down.
This is a great read which I will be highly recommending.

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville ⭐️⭐️

Blurb - ‘It is 1788. When twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth marries the arrogant and hot-headed soldier John Macarthur, she soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Forced to travel with him to New South Wales, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours. All her life she has learned to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined, and passions she could never express.’

Unfortunately nothing really happens!! I think that because Elizabeth was an officer’s wife she was sheltered from all the hardships and we hear hardly anything about what it was like for the early colonists, apart from drinking tea with the other officers and going for walks for a tryst with her lover! I was waiting for some big event but it just never came!

The book has got some really positive reviews so please don’t let me put you off, but I just didn’t feel any connection, was disappointed as really loved her other book ‘The Secret River’

But on the plus side, how gorgeous is this cover!! 😍

Thank you to @netgal for sending me this in exchange for my honest review, hope I wasn’t too honest!

A Room Made of Leaves frames itself as the true diary of Elizabeth McArthur, and Grenville as merely its transcriber. An interesting play with fiction and history that one always considers when historical fiction takes the lives of real people and makes them a story, and one which Elizabeth the character mentions throughout, reminding us we are being told a story and we have only her word it is true. This becomes even more interesting when the idea of the story England and Australia tell of the foundation of Australia, and of the different aboriginal people who were displaced. Grenville faces this aspect of colonisation in a way that gives humanity to the coloniser but also does not make even clever, kind and brave Elizabeth innocent in a genocide. Her indigenous characters do feel distant from us, and sometimes stray close to being teachers for our white character to learn more rather than fully developed in themselves. Although perhaps this is because Grenville does not think it her story to tell.
Overall I flew through this book. The short, diary cum memoir style of the chapters made for easy and compulsive reading, and her language was readable and in parts beautiful, although perhaps she did not build the sense of time as well as could be hoped. Her characters were warm and complex, with the noted exception of the Aboriginal characters mentioned earlier, and the story while simple done with skill and subtlety. The pacing did feel slightly off, although not enough to jar me as a reader, but the ending did rather rush up on me. Overall I enjoyed it and think Grenville has great skill as a writer of historical fiction, but will seek out some reviews by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reviewers.

Unfortunately, I didnt enjoy the writing style at all. Felt a bit cold and the language was strange, and I blame that for not being able to get fully invested in the story. Too bad, cause it seems like something I would otherwise enjoy. I do recommend it to other historical fiction lovers, it has a great historical background and a strong female character. And, do I have to mention the beauty of Australia?

Big thnx to the NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy in exchange of my honest opinion.

I love Kate Grenville’s novels and was so excited to read this one. Sadly, I just wasn’t wowed by it. It felt like a story that never got going and then when it finally did get going it was over far too soon! I found it incredibly frustrating and the use of short choppy chapters meant I never felt I had got into the narrative flow and it had the result that if I put the book down there was no impetus to pick it back up again. Where I normally devour Grenville’s work, this one took days of only reading a little at a time.
There were some stand out moments where I felt I was reading a Kate Grenville novel. Elizabeth’s relationship with Mr Dawes was beautiful and so gently segued into the burgeoning relationship with the native peoples. But, just as I’d begun reading happily the chapter is slammed shut and Mr Dawes is no more.
The scenes with Elizabeth and Hanneford in the fields with the sheep are likewise lovely and evocative while also providing some actual detail as to why Elizabeth is such a fantastic historical figure.
Children are born, then live and a mentioned frequently, then they die and aren’t mentioned again. Then born and live, later die, more are born and ‘oh by the way a bunch more were born too’ slam chapter shut, rinse and repeat. It felt lopsided. Either add in scenes with all the children and include them or focus on the narrative of Elizabeth as a pioneer in her own right and doing go into the domestic matters in any detail at all. Had Elizabeth written this history herself she would have chosen to include all of her children or not to bring them into it at all.

Some beautiful writing as usual, but too snappy for me. I felt the novel could easily have been another 200 pages longer and would have been better for it.

For some reason, I always think of Kate Grenville as one of Australia’s best-kept literary secrets but she really isn’t. As an Orange Prize and Commonwealth Writers Prize-winner, her standing as an international author isn’t exactly in doubt. But if you’ve yet to dip into her work A Room Full of Leaves is the perfect place to start.

The novel centres around the historical figures of John Macarthur and his wife Elizabeth, taking its inspiration the handful of letters and memorabilia extant from Elizabeth and expanding upon them with the fictional ‘discovery’ of a secret memoir detailing the untold side of their marriage.

If you’ve spent any time in Australia, you’ll know what a pivotal figure in the country’s history Macarthur is. A pioneer of the sheep farming industry and in the early political establishment of New South Wales, his name is everywhere, particularly around greater Sydney. The novel presents him in a far less favourable light however and Grenville’s intention here is to highlight the disparity (and outright fictionality) between historical account and reality. ‘Do not believe too quickly’, says Elizabeth and it is very much the mantra of this novel.

Leaves is a multi-layered novel, however, and as well as providing a revised portrait of Macarthur it also dwells on the utterly restrictive nature of woman’s lives in the period, as well as the harshness of life in the early days of the establishment of New South Wales and of the terrible treatment both of the convicts who found themselves dumped in this new world as well as the indigenous peoples they savagely and ruthlessly displaced.

The book does have a rather rocky start, however, and the first chapters detailing Elizabeth’s life in Devon before the move to Australia are not quite as successful as the later sections of the book. The occasional but glaring anachronism is enough to stymie the world-building at the opening of the book. For instance, it’s unlikely that a late 18th-century Devon farmer is going to describe his chickens as the very Aussie ‘chooks’ or to exclaim ‘she’ll be right’. Elizabeth also describes her husband as being ‘on the make’ apparently a good 60 years before the expression came into common usage. They’re hardly the most egregious of slips, however, and you could perhaps headcanon them as being the work of the memoir’s modern editor but they’re still enough to jar sufficiently that the English chapters of the novel never really manage to lift themselves off the page.

Things improve immeasurably when we get to Sydney, however and Grenville evokes the seamy chaos of the colony’s early days brilliantly. She’s also characteristically excellent at capturing the beauty of the Australian landscape later in the novel. It’s here that the obviously detailed and assiduous research comes into its own and the Australian chapters are an education as well as an entertainment. (I worked for a time on a local newspaper in Paramatta, for instance, but had no idea its name meant ‘place of eels’.)

But it is the Macarthurs who form the centrepiece of this novel, with Elizabeth particularly being vividly and sympathetically drawn — a shrewd, smart and self-aware woman living a life of restriction within marriage to a petty and unpleasant bully.

However, Grenville wisely resists the temptation to turn John Macarthur into some kind of literary monster. His role in the infamous ‘Battle for Paramatta’ is drawn with circumspection and Grenville takes care to avoid turning Macarthur into a figure of melodramatic villainy. Instead we are presented with a petty, vindictive and manipulative political animal, a figure of corruption, selfishness and deceit and one with a depressingly shrivelled and inadequate emotional palate. It’s this, in fact, that gives the novel a strangely modern feel and this representation of Macarthur will be painfully familiar to any American currently emerging from the Trump presidency or those in the UK and Australia still enduring the ‘leaderships’ of Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison respectively.

In a wider context, Grenville is also careful to avoid any other narrative slips into melodrama or easy sensationalism and the material is certainly there in the transplantation of an ingénue young woman from one side of the world to the other, to be flung into social intrigue, romantic infidelity and frustrated desires. And while Grenville could very easily have indulged these approaches, she skilfully defuses them to present us with a narrative that is unwavering in its sense of historical fidelity.

A Room Full of Leaves is a masterful work from one of Australia’s greatest historical novelists and shares much in common with Grenville’s previous works, like The Secret River and Sarah Thornhill, with which it shares many of the same preoccupations. It’s well worth your time and I suspect will lead most to exploring the author’s other work in pretty short order.