Sarah Thornhill
 First edition | |
| Author | Kate Grenville |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | novel |
| Publisher | Text Publishing, Australia |
Publication date | 2011 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 307 |
| ISBN | 9781921758621 |
| Preceded by | The Lieutenant |
| Followed by | A Room Made of Leaves |
Sarah Thornhill (2011) is a novel by Australian author Kate Grenville.[1] It is the sequel to the author's 2005 novel The Secret River.
It won the 2012 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Fiction Book of the Year,[2] and was shortlisted for the 2012 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
Plot summary[edit]
Sarah Thornhill is the last child born to William and Sal Thornhill, whose struggle to establish a new life in Australia was told in the author's novel The Secret River. Sarah's mother is now dead and her father has re-married, who attempts to conceal and overcome her husband's convict past. But Sarah has a will of her own and falls in love with Jack Langland, a "half darkie", the product of a white father and an Aboriginal mother.
Notes[edit]
- Dedication: This novel is dedicated to the memory of Sophia Wiseman and Maryanne Wiseman, and their mother, 'Rugig'.
- Epigraph: "It does not follow that because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively no shape at all or an infinity of shapes." E. H. Carr.
Reviews[edit]
Belinda McKeon in The Guardian noted: "It is with often marvellous vividness and clarity that Grenville evokes Sarah's world, from childhood on the Hawkesbury, through an adolescence of idealistic love, to a marriage towards which she goes with a resigned heart but of which she ultimately makes a fine hand."[3]
Delia Falconer in The Monthly found that "Like its predecessors, Sarah Thornhill will be welcomed by many readers as just the story we need now; others may prefer a less comforting, more ambiguous version of the past."[4]
Awards and nominations[edit]
- 2013 longlisted International Awards — International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 2012 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award
- 2012 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2012 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2012 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Fiction Book of the Year[2]
- 2012 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "Austlit — Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville". Austlit. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
- ^ a b "Austlit — ABIA Australian Geberal Fiction Book of the Year". Austlit. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
- ^ "Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville" by Belinda McKeon, The Guardian, 25 February 2012
- ^ "Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville" by Delia Falconer, The Monthly, September 2011