No, every book seems impossibly difficult to write – and impossible in a way different from all the earlier books. The only thing that gets easier is knowing that every book seemed impossible, but it got there in the end. The difficulty isn’t a signal to give up, just to settle in for plenty of redrafting. Natives fighting to hold on to what is originally theirs is part of the weave of A Room Made of Leaves, which continues Grenville’s focus on settler life in her historical trilogy, The Secret River (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a finalist for the 2006 Booker Prize), The Lieutenant and Sarah Thornhill. But that thread is tenuous in this novel — who is the aggressor, and who, the aggrieved? — and readers may not find themselves rooting for the rightful owners of the land. Elizabeth’s friendship with astronomer William Dawes is the central relationship. Grenville’s 2008 novel The Lieutenant was loosely based on Dawes, and she was inspired to write this imaginary memoir after reading Elizabeth’s passing reference to Dawes in an actual letter describing her astronomy lessons with the scientist and naval officer: “I blush at my error”.

This blush becomes a motif throughout A Room Made of Leaves: of the true nature of their friendship, and for what remains unsaid. “I blush at my error” was, in Grenville’s eyes, a rare glimpse of Elizabeth’s feelings hidden in what Grenville describes in her editor’s note as otherwise “unrevealing” and “dull” correspondence. Those five words are where this book started. What they told me was that she wasn’t as bland and boring as her letters might suggest. She lived – or at least wrote – behind a mask, and just for that one instant, the mask slipped.With no option but to follow her husband to Australia, she makes the most of the rough conditions, does her best for her children and develops friendships among the settlers and transported convicts of the growing town of Sydney, New South Wales.

Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures There have always been schemers and it seems they make schemers of their significant others too, despite themselves. Who is scheming who? Dawes was the first European to defend Aboriginal rights, however, his stance and subsequent events meant that an extended tenure to remain in Australia was refused and he returned to England. If you’ve been joining in with our #ReadingWomen challenge, you’ll have read Kate Grenville’s incredible Women’s Prize for Fiction winner The Idea of Perfection, and you’ll be as excited as we are about Kate’s brand new novel. A Room Made of Leaves publishes this week, and here’s Kate herself on the inspirations and research that went into her beguiling new book. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?K: Yes. The wonderful thing now is that indigenous writers of course are beginning to tell those stories with an indigenous voice and that is fantastic because someone like me, well I feel that I can really only write about the white version of that story, that’s the story that I feel kind of entitled to tell. So one of the ways that I’m telling it in A Room Made of Leaves is not so much to talk about the events but to talk about the stories about the events and to try and take them apart. But I did also want to go further than I had gone in The Secret River in giving proper individual characterisation to some indigenous, particularly the women. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex I appreciate the level of research that went into this story. Writing a fictional memoir of a real historical figure is an interesting idea. This story, told through Grenville’s sharp lens, is one that will stay with the reader for a long time.’

Australian history, like most histories, is a bit light-on when it comes to women, because they left so little behind. Even when they were educated enough to write letters or journals, those writings are bland, sedate things, suitable to be shared in any genteel parlour. Women at that time had no choice but to be bland. Without any power over any aspect of their lives, they were obliged to go along with a social and legal system that equated them with children. They might have talked together about what they felt about that destiny, but none of them could risk putting it in writing. A beautiful, intimate portrait of a woman who history has left mostly in mystery, in the shadow of her husband. So before I do anything else I just want to congratulate you on creating such a beautiful book. I gave it to my mum and she loved it as well. So the Dharug people certainly form a part of the intimate circles that you draw and I use the word intimate in a very positive sense. Why was it important to you to depict the humour and the goodwill that was involved in those relationships in those early colonial relations as well as the violence and the dispossession? In 1789 she makes the arduous journey across the sea with her husband and baby to the newly established penal colony in New South Wales. Despite having no feelings for her husband she begins a new life there; one that will last until her death in 1850.

Fiercely intelligent . . . the novel works on two levels: the historical and particular, and the philosophical, bringing into question the extent to which it is possible to own anything, even one's life'