{"id":10891,"date":"2012-01-08T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T17:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=10891"},"modified":"2012-01-06T16:39:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T03:39:30","slug":"what-im-reading-the-lieutenant-by-kate-grenville-text-publishing-now-finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/01\/08\/what-im-reading-the-lieutenant-by-kate-grenville-text-publishing-now-finished\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Reading: “The Lieutenant” by Kate Grenville (Text Publishing)—Now Finished"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On December 18<\/a> I mentioned that I had begun reading “The Lieutenant”, and what I had to say then included the following:<\/p>\n

“The Lieutenant <\/em>is historical fiction and based on the true story of William Dawes, a soldier, astronomer, mathematician and linguist who was part of the First Fleet expedition to settle Australia, and founded the first astronomical observatory as part of the Sydney settlement. And according to the Author\u2019s Note at the rear of the book: ‘The record he left of the language of the indigenous people of the Sydney area is the most extensive we have.’<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Getting round to reading\u00a0The Lieutenant<\/em> has taken some time, and so far I am only in the early chapters. But I am enjoying them immensely, partly because the character of Daniel Rooke, based on Dawes, is so interesting, and partly because Grenville\u2019s writing is such a joy to read\u2014clear compelling prose, beautifully expressed, with wonderful characterization. I am a little wary of how the story will develop, not because of any doubts about Kate Grenville\u2019s writing or storytelling, but because I know that the history of interaction between the British settlers and the indigenous Aboriginals was generally tragic (mainly for the Aboriginals.)\u00a0 But based on my experience with The Idea of Perfection <\/em>and what I have read so far, I am pretty certain that I\u2019m going to continue enjoying the book.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I finished The Lieutenant<\/em> over the holiday break and so can now confirm that I absolutely continued enjoying the book, for all the reasons given above, but mostly I believe for the finely drawn character portrait of Daniel Rooke and his ‘first contact’ interaction with the Cadigal people—and the choices we must all sometimes face between what would be easiest and most convenient for ourselves and what we know to be right.<\/p>\n

I recommend The Lieutenant<\/em> unreservedly, particularly to those who enjoy character-driven historical fiction.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

And by the way, I now have an author page on Good Reads<\/a> so I will be adding my ‘What I’m Reading’<\/a> (WIM) text to the books I list there from now on. (I may get around to adding some WIM text retrospectively as well, but that will be as time allows.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On December 18 I mentioned that I had begun reading “The Lieutenant”, and what I had to say then included the following: “The Lieutenant is historical fiction and based on the true story of William Dawes, a soldier, astronomer, mathematician and linguist who was part of the First Fleet expedition to settle Australia, and founded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10891"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10903,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions\/10903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}