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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.
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andA Room Made of Leaves
‘There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest writers‘
‘One of the most entertaining, accomplished, engaging novels written in this country…We always knew Kate Grenville was good but this one is brilliant.’
‘Grenville’s extraordinary trilogy is a major achievement in Australian literature.’
‘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.’
‘This story, told through Grenville’s sharp lens, is one that will stay with the reader for a long time.’
‘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!’
‘Giving voice to the countless generations of women who were prevented from telling their true stories…Compelling.’
‘A little bit of Austen, a little bit of the Brontes, a little bit of Thomas Hardy.’
‘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 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’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.’
‘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.’
‘Stunning…a clever mix of fact and fiction.’
‘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.’
‘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.’
