I have a real weakness for Australian fiction and I am always trying to ensure that the library contains books from all across the world - this will certainly be included. The way that the Australian landscape is depicted makes it feel like another character and there are definitely extracts from this novel that I have bookmarked to use as an educational tool to help with descriptive writing. Overall, I would recommend

Kate Grenville writes a blend of fact and fiction, inspired by the letters written to friends and family in England by Elizabeth Macarthur, a novel in which Grenville makes the claim of discovering a secret memoir that is later revealed to be an untruth. The letters are given an alternative spin to what is actually said in them, providing a more palatable picture of Elizabeth, one that is more appealing to our modern sensibilities, and questioning the official historical accounts of a turbulent period of early settler history that brushed over the cruel realities, brutalities, and crimes committed against the indigenous people, and the grim exploitation of the convict population. Elizabeth moves from England to Australia with her husband John, seeing Sydney as it was, John is to become a wool baron, sheep farming in New South Wales.

Elizabeth is portrayed as a woman of passion, bright, resilient, courageous, ambitious, independent, witty, and able, married to a nasty piece of work, the manipulative, domineering bully that is John, so she has to operate below the radar to manage him in times when women had little power or agency in a patriarchal world. A mother to many children, she is self aware, not blind to the unacknowledged horrors of what happening to the indigenous population, drawing connections between the colonisation and her life. This apparent 'biography' evokes and gives life to a Elizabeth, the challenges she faces, the relationships, love, and her considerable input in the business in the Australia of this historical period, the harsh living conditions, with details and descriptions of the locations, the social norms and attitudes of the time, challenging the official glossed over versions of history.

This is a beautifully written and atmospheric piece of historical fiction, ambiguous, leaving it to the reader to determine what the life of the real Elizabeth Macarthur might have been like. I really enjoyed the well researched storytelling and the literary device used by the author, but I felt that many other readers might be less accepting of it, the questionable historical veracity over the life of a real life figure from this period, echoing the questions that should be aimed at the veracity of accepted Australian history. A wonderfully expressed and engaging read that I know I will be thinking about and reflecting on further. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

I guess you could add this to the sub sub genre - pseudo-biographical historical fiction. It’s fine but nothing special. It actually started out great and then she met the bastard and it kind of went downhill for me. What stinks about it is that it happens early on (at like the 15% mark). It went downhill but it didn’t plummet. It was still nice to read. However, for me personally, it was also difficult to read. The author employs an olde-English type language that never really worked for me and it felt forced. Elizabeth Macarthur is a fascinating figure in Australian history, but I’m not sure this story does her justice.

Thank you so much for this opportunity!

Loved the cover of this book and as a fan of historical feminist fiction, I was fully expecting to love this book too. However, whilst it is written in female voice, the majority of the story focused on the males, rather than the protagonists own story. Short chapters kept the story flowing, but not much of consequence seemed to happen and I found it all rather lacklustre.

A wonderful story of a woman’s triumphs. A book I could read over and over again. Totally loved this book! I fell in love with the story. It was well written. Kept me up reading throughout the night. I highly recommend this book! Thanks for letting me review the book Netgalley and the publisher

My thanks to Kate Grenville, Canongate, and Net Galley for the ARC of A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES.
I have read this before, and was just as taken with it this time. It is the memories of Elizabeth, wife of John Macarthur, a soldier who went to Australia in the beginning of that country. She has already discovered her mistake in becoming pregnant by him which led to a marriage she did not want, however she perseveres and discovers a love for the country she has been forced to live in, and finds a strength in the new woman she becomes in the light of living with a difficult, sometimes brutal, and certainly manic depressive husband. Beautifully written.

I don't know anything about the history of Australia and its people, the original Australians and its modern settlers, but for a few basic facts. So, I was curious about this novel which purports to be the found memoir of a historical early settler, Elizabeth Macarthur née Veale (1766 – 1850). I was not disappointed in this act of re-creation! Of course, I went to Wikipedia to see what were the facts of the real Elizabeth, and I can confirm that Grenville has not changed what it is known of her (even her actual, preserved letters are accounted for and commented in a most compelling, intelligent manner), but has gone far beyond those facts into building up a possible life which fits the biography yet makes her story not only illuminating of a time far away in the past, but also relevant and resonant for our times in the present, let alone entertaining: this is a novel you do not want to put down.

Elizabeth tells her story in short vignettes (vivid, concise descriptions and dialogue, good pace) that as time passes are less detailed (a rather believable "weakness" as I can well imagine that the later part of one's life is generally less eventful or worthy of comment. In fact, Elizabeth is rather focused in what she wants to leave an account of: how she managed, despite the constraints she had to face, to be in a modicum of control over her life (love life included!) and enjoy it by using her obvious intelligence and nous to navigate a particular set of circumstances and a rather difficult husband. Despite having nine children, her role as a mother is not central to the narration, far more interesting, she is intent on examining who she is and how she came to become most likely the actual maker of her husband's fame as a wool producer... She is also sensitive to the darker realities of colonisation, and Grenville makes her consciousness of it believable, wetting one's appetite as a reader to know more of the actual history of colonisation.

I recommend this novel. I enjoyed the life of Elizabeth Macarthur, her maddening husband, and the glimpse of a very different landscape. Intelligent, enjoyable, entertaining. With many thanks to Canongate via NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this excellent book.

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 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.

“A Room Made of Leaves” begins with a note from Kate Grenville in the guise of a transcriber and editor who found these pages which are supposedly the secret memoirs of Elizabeth Macarthur, a real Anglo-Australian merchant from the late 18th/early 19th century and wife to one of the most famous and wealthy entrepreneurs in New South Wales at that time. However, at the end of the book Grenville acknowledges “This book isn't history. At the same time it's not pure invention.” This playful ruse makes the novel an immersive fictional experience but it also adds to the sense of what went unsaid both in the historic documents Elizabeth left behind and concerning the circumstances that led this couple who came from humble origins to build a lucrative Australian wool industry. Grenville fictionally reimagines Elizabeth's journey from growing up among provincial Cornish farmers to her challenging marriage to her indomitable husband John to settling in the relative wildness of the New South Wales colony. It's a tale of self-invention, hidden passion and the canny resolve needed to outwit a patriarchal society in order to achieve real independence. Grenville creates a portrait of a woman with hidden veins of emotion while also atmospherically depicting the gritty reality of pioneer life in a foreign land.

The chapters which make up this novel are quite short in length which gives the text the punchy immediacy of diary entries. I enjoyed how this kept the novel skipping along at a good pace. It's terrifying how Elizabeth becomes entangled in such a nightmarish situation marrying a brutish husband and being forced to move across the world. Yet she's intelligent enough to know the real danger of stepping out of her role and falling into an even more perilous position. At one point during the long sea voyage to their new home John becomes very ill and she realises that if he dies she'll be even more vulnerable. I found it moving and relatable how she discovers the key is to time things right to allow for opportunities for certain freedoms within this restrictive society as well as chances to discover what she really wants in life. Crucially, Grenville frames this story within the context of colonization and that the land where Elizabeth and John found rich opportunity is also a place which was stolen from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. A mystery about what really happened during a crucial battle between the English and the native people gives a haunting quality to this intimate tale about how one shrewd woman might have triumphed over considerable obstacles to realise her full potential.