The first new novel in almost ten years from award-winning, bestselling author Kate Grenville.
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes, has been adapted for the stage and as an acclaimed television miniseries, and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville's other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Dark Places and the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection. Her most recent books are two works of non-fiction, One Life- My Mother's Story and The Case Against Fragrance. She has also written three books about the writing process. In 2017 Grenville was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
‘There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest writers‘
*Sunday Mail*
‘One of the most entertaining, accomplished, engaging novels
written in this country…We always knew Kate Grenville was good but
this one is brilliant.’
*Courier Mail on The Secret River*
‘Grenville’s extraordinary trilogy is a major achievement in
Australian literature.’
*Australian Book Review*
‘Kate Grenville is a literary alchemist, turning the leaden shadow
of the historical Elizabeth Macarthur into a luminescent, golden
woman for our times. Intelligent, compassionate, strategic and dead
sexy, Grenville’s Macarthur is an unforgettable character who makes
us question everything we thought we knew about our colonial past.
A polished gem of a novel by a writer who is as brave as she is
insightful. I simply loved it.’
*Clare Wright*
'This story, told through Grenville’s sharp lens, is one that will
stay with the reader for a long time.’
*Readings*
'An ingenious tapestry of history and invention, A Room Made of
Leaves is a novel of womanhood, motherhood, secrets, lies,
obsession, transformation and the loss of innocence. It’s a true
pleasure to read Grenville’s writing, and this one’s been well
worth the wait!’
*Booktopia*
‘Giving voice to the countless generations of women who were
prevented from telling their true stories…Compelling.’
*Herald Sun*
‘A little bit of Austen, a little bit of the Brontes, a little bit
of Thomas Hardy.’
*RN Bookshelf*
‘Vividly rendered, warmly sympathetic, daring in speculative
breadth: a full-length portrait in oils of a woman known to most of
us only in profile miniature…If Grenville’s novel is inspired by
provocation, it unfolds as a feeling, organic story.’
*Australian*
'Grenville so convincingly creates Elizabeth’s voice it is easy to
forget her opening warning: “Do not believe too
quickly!”...Grenville’s Elizabeth stays with you.'
*Conversation*
‘Her fiction is always a challenge, a goad to our complacencies,
social decorums and repressions…Richly imagined…[Provides] the
shock we perhaps need to remind us of what might still be
possible.’
*Age/SMH*
‘Grenville’s prose is elegant and meticulously crafted…Despite the
trappings of history in A Room Made of Leaves and Grenville’s
impressive use of the archive to conjure the novel, her achievement
here is not a historical one. A Room Made of Leaves questions,
rhetorically, how to live ethically with a history that is
unfair.’
*Saturday Paper*
‘Another book in her fantastic collection of work about early
Australian colonial times and it’s at least as good, if not even
better, than all the others… Absolutely brilliant.’
*Radio NZ Nine to Noon*
‘Stunning…a clever mix of fact and fiction.’
*Weekly Times*
‘Grenville invites the reader to reflect on the complex
relationship between truth and falsehood, history and fiction…[A]
stunning literary achievement.’
*Kirsten Tranter, Guardian*
‘Grenville is as canny as she is imaginative…[She] colours your
imagination, designs a setting and gives you a push. Australian
history is relentlessly inglorious but Grenville allows you to
rearrange it through individuals who were not…An interesting prism
of a book…Grenville knows exactly what she can do and does it.’
*Monthly*
‘Fabulous…It will delight you and it will keep you company during
lockdown. But it will also make you think deeply about home and
belonging and our hidden and brutal colonial past. And although
Kate implores us to not believe too quickly, I would like you to
please believe me when I declare that you will adore this
book.’
*Melanie Cheng*
‘[A] shimmering new novel…Grenville gives us throughout a gorgeous
tactile sense of the Australian bush in all its idiosyncratic
light, colour and movement.’
*SA Weekend*
‘Skilful…An engaging book.’
*Guardian*
‘Memorable…Macarthur comes to vivid life…A gorgeously tactile sense
of the Australian bush.’
*Mercury*
‘The captivating story of a woman navigating a difficult marriage
and an affair of the heart.’
*Sunday Life*
‘Kate Grenville’s ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ - an almost flawless
novel about our early colonial history told through the fictional
eyes of Elizabeth MacArthur - it’s deep in research and beautifully
realised.’
*Heather Rose, author of The Museum of Modern Love*
'Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves (Text) gives us an
unforgettable flesh-and-blood re-imagining of 18th-century mother
of the Australian wool industry, Elizabeth Macarthur.’
*Clare Wright, Age*
'Grenville is challenging the reader, through the eyes of
Elizabeth, to face the harsh reality that success and flourishing
can so often be at the expense of others.’
*Catholic Outlook*
‘Excellent…So beautifully observed and written…An accomplished
novel with all the experience that a writer like Kate Grenville
brings to her work...Really a superb piece of work.’
*Leigh Sales*
‘Vividly, even wickedly, re-imagines the life of Elizabeth
Macarthur.’
*Australian*
'In her rich vision of an alternate life for Elizabeth… Grenville
offers a potentially myth-busting version of a turbulent time.’
*Booklist*
‘Historical comeuppance is on order in Kate Grenville’s A Room Made
of Leaves…White-hot…[An] impressively angry book.’
*Wall Street Journal*
'At first I was intrigued, then I was enthralled, and by the end I
felt as though Elizabeth had been a flesh-and-blood friend. Her
story makes for a powerful interrogation of femininity, patriarchy,
and colliding cultures. Grenville dedicates the book “to all those
whose stories have been silenced”, and it speaks to those gaps in
the archive–a stunning work of historical fiction for the #MeToo
era.’
*Primer*
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