Kate Grenville – She Reads Novels

This book wasn’t what I was expecting at all. It was listed as fiction on NetGalley but feels much more like non-fiction, although I can understand why the author and publisher could be hesitant to describe it that way as there is a lot of imagination involved! Regardless of the label, I found it absolutely fascinating.

Kate Grenville begins by describing a visit she made to the NSW State Archives to research her mother’s life. During this visit she came across a file relating to Currabubula Public School and was immediately intrigued by a collection of letters written by or about the teacher Joseph Connor implying that he was abusive towards the children. Deciding to dig deeper, Grenville read all eighty-eight letters in the file, dating from the 1880s to 1890s, changing her mind back and forth about Connor with each new piece of information. Were the allegations against him true or was he the victim of a vendetta pursued by a group of parents for reasons of their own?

Stories floated up but then sank again. Characters came forward as one thing but on a second look turned into something else. Meanings took shape, then evaporated. My sympathies, like a school of fish, wheeled towards Joseph Connor. With the next letter, they gathered, regrouped, wheeled the other way.

Currabubula is a rural village in New South Wales where Kate Grenville’s grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder, grew up (her story is told in Restless Dolly Maunder). In 1884, Joseph Connor was appointed sole teacher of Currabubula Public School, responsible for up to seventy children at a time. The recent Public Instruction Act had made school attendance compulsory in NSW and teachers willing to go and work in small rural communities were in high demand. Grenville’s first impression of Connor, as she worked through the letters and other documents in the file, was of “a straightforward, honest fellow doing his guileless best”, a man trying to educate children in an overcrowded classroom, having to virtually beg for money from the Department of Public Instruction to purchase new chairs or get the toilets cleaned, while also dealing with the needs of his own rapidly growing family.

Some of the complaints against Connor seem malicious and spiteful, but others are more convincing. Grenville examines the complaints, along with the responses given by Connor and the School Inspector and the outcomes of inquiries and court hearings and tries to decide what was really going on. Was he really beating the children and punishing them excessively? Was it true that he was keeping livestock in the schoolyard where the children played? Was he being unfairly strict in enforcing the rules regarding non-attendance? With no evidence beyond the documents in the file, Grenville tries to read between the lines, studying the choice of words and phrases and filling in the gaps by imagining how the people involved may have felt.

Grenville doesn’t reach any real conclusions about Connor or any of the mysteries surrounding him – for example, the cause of a rift with his eldest daughter Bridie, also a teacher, is never revealed – but she encourages us to form our own opinions from the limited clues available. She explains in her author’s note that due to the assumptions she makes about Connor and the other residents of Currabubula and the possible theories she builds around them, she decided to change the names of Joseph Connor and the other key players in the story.

I think how much you enjoy this book will depend on whether you’re interested in historical research, archival information and interpreting sources. It won’t appeal to everyone, but for the right reader it’s a wonderful read. I loved it, partly for the glimpses into the history of education in Australia and the daily lives of people in a small village like Currabubula, and partly for the exploration of how stories can be made from a mixture of fact and fiction.

Thanks to Canongate for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Kate Grenville is an author I’ve wanted to read for years but never have, so I’m pleased to have finally had an opportunity to try one of her books. Restless Dolly Maunder is a short novel, inspired by the life of Grenville’s own maternal grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder (known to everyone as Dolly).

Dolly is born on a sheep farm in Currabubula, New South Wales in 1881, the sixth of seven children. Her older brothers and sisters can barely read and write, attending school only when their parents can spare them, but by the time Dolly reaches school-age, attendance has become compulsory. Dolly is a bright, intelligent girl and decides that she wants to continue her education and become a teacher after leaving school. Unfortunately, it’s not her decision to make – her father’s permission is required and he refuses to give it, saying that “over my dead body” will a daughter of his go out to work.

As the years go by, Dolly’s siblings begin to marry and move away, while Dolly herself stays on the farm with her parents, eventually marrying Bert Russell, an old friend from school who comes to work for her father. When Dolly discovers that her mother has been keeping a terrible secret from her, she decides that it’s time she and Bert started a new life somewhere else. Aware that farming leaves them at the mercy of the weather, they agree to try something completely different – running a little grocery shop in Wahroonga. It proves to be a success, but Dolly is still not satisfied…in fact, it seems that she’s never going to be satisfied, with anything.

The rest of the novel follows Dolly, Bert and their three children as they move around from place to place, from one business venture to another. Although I did initially have a lot of sympathy for Dolly and understood her desire to make something meaningful of her life, having had her dreams of becoming a teacher destroyed by her father, as the book went on I began to dislike her more and more. It seemed that she was only ever thinking of herself, giving no consideration at all to the effect on her children of constantly being uprooted and disrupted. She was a cold, unloving mother and although she was aware of her faults, she made no attempt to change.

Despite the unlikeable protagonist – and Grenville acknowledges herself in her author’s note that her grandmother was a difficult woman to love – I did enjoy this book. It was interesting to get some insights into life in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The family live through both World Wars and although the first leaves them largely untouched, by the time the second comes around Bert and Dolly have sons of fighting age, so are affected in a much more personal way. With this being my first experience of a Kate Grenville book, I didn’t know what to expect from her writing, but I found it very readable. She doesn’t use speech marks, which usually annoys me, but it didn’t bother me too much here, maybe because it’s not a particularly dialogue-heavy book. I’ll look forward to reading more of her work.

Thanks to Canongate for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.