A Room Made of Leaves A Room Made of Leaves

A Room Made of Leaves

    • 4.1 • 334 Ratings
    • $12.99
    • $12.99

Publisher Description

What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.

Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear—at last!—what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.

At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality.

Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.


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 ThornhillThe LieutenantDark 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. She lives in Melbourne.

‘There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest writers’ Sunday Mail

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2020
2 July
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
336
Pages
PUBLISHER
The Text Publishing Company
SELLER
Text Publishing
SIZE
3.4
MB

Customer Reviews

Flowerfluff ,

Couldn’t put it down

I couldn’t put this book down. I loved the writing style and I loved reading about Mrs MacArthur and the life she lived. It was really interesting to read about the settlement of Australia in the early days, but even more so through the eyes of a woman. I loved this book.

Fastback43 ,

Masterful, subtle, tedious, anachronistic

The first chapters were captivating as I revelled in Grenville’s subtle observations and masterful word craft. I also admired the clever twists in Elizabeth’s handling (manipulation) of situations for much of it but then I began to find her unmitigated scorn for her husband became tedious, as did the meandering story without much of what resembles a plot. Of course it’s more a fake memoir than a story so that is to be expected but I did find it rather boring and had to force myself to press on to the end. The other thing I recoiled from was the anachronisms in the final chapters—modern perspectives on race and dispossession lumped onto historical figures.

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The Secret River The Secret River
2005
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2015
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2011
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The Idea of Perfection The Idea of Perfection
2012

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