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A Room Made of Leaves

A Room Made of Leaves

Kate Grenville

  • awardWinner, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2021
  • awardShortlisted, Age Book of the Year, 2021
  • awardShortlisted, Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, United Kingdom, 2021
  • awardShortlisted, Literary Fiction Book of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2021
  • awardLonglisted, ARA Historical Novel Prize, 2021
  • awardLonglisted, Voss Literary Prize, 2021
  • 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?

    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.

    A Room Made of Leaves is set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where lies have the dangerous power to shape reality. This book is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.

    kategrenville.com.au

    A READER’S INTRODUCTION TO A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES:

    What if Elizabeth Macarthur’s letters and journals were a mask hiding her true experiences and emotions? What if the contemporary expectations of a gentlewoman prevented her from writing her truth to anyone but herself?

    This is Kate Grenville’s starting point for this brilliant novel, a starting point encouraged by Elizabeth Macarthur’s recommendation not to believe too quickly...

    Read our book club notes for more.

    Kate Grenville in conversation with Ramona Koval

    INTERVIEWS and REVIEWS

    3CR: Published or Not   
    3RRR: Backstory (0:09:00)
    ABC Radio National: The Bookshelf (0:21:00)
    ABC Radio National: The Book Show  
    ABC Radio Melbourne: Mornings (2:14:00)   
    ABC Radio Sydney: Focus  
    Adelaide Writers Festival podcast   
    Age   
    Australian ($)
    Australian ($)  
    Australian Financial Review  
    BBC: Open Book  
    Books, Books, Books podcast  
    Booktopia blog  
    Booktopia podcast   
    Chat 10 Looks 3 (0:27:30)  
    Conversation  
    Feminist Writers Festival blog   
    Final Draft podcast  
    First Time podcast   
    Guardian  
    Guardian  
    Guardian   
    Guardian   
    Meanjin: Lockdown ($)  
    Melbourne Writers Festival keynote speech   
    Monthly   
    Primer   
    Radio NZ   
    Readings  
    Saturday Paper   
    Sydney Morning Herald  
    Sydney Morning Herald: Creatives aren't just head-in-the-clouds dreamers    
    The Garret podcast  
    The Leaf Bookshop (video) 
    Wall Street Journal    
    Wheeler Centre  



    Kate Grenville
    About the Author

    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...

    Read Moreright
    Extent:
    336pp
    Format:
    Paperback
    Text publication date:
    21 February 2023
    ISBN:
    9781922790262
    AU Price:
    $22.99
    NZ Price:
    $26.00
    Australian
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    Praise for Kate Grenville
    andA Room Made of Leaves

    ‘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.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘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!’

    ‘This story, told through Grenville’s sharp lens, is one that will stay with the reader for a long time.’

    ‘Giving voice to the countless generations of women who were prevented from telling their true stories…Compelling.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘Grenville invites the reader to reflect on the complex relationship between truth and falsehood, history and fiction…[A] stunning literary achievement.’

    ‘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.’

    ‘[A] shimmering new novel…Grenville gives us throughout a gorgeous tactile sense of the Australian bush in all its idiosyncratic light, colour and movement.’

    Other editions ofA Room Made of Leaves
    • A Room Made of Leaves
      ebook
      ISBN: 9781925923469
      2 July 2020
      Buy ebook
    • A Room Made of Leaves
      Hardback
      ISBN: 9781922330024
      2 July 2020
    • A Room Made of Leaves
      Paperback
      ISBN: 9781922458025
      31 August 2021