A Room Made of Leaves

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If you’ve been joining in with our #ReadingWomen challenge, you’ll have read Kate Grenville’s incredible Women’s Prize for Fiction winner The Idea of Perfection, and you’ll be as excited as we are about Kate’s brand new novel. A Room Made of Leaves publishes this week, and here’s Kate herself on the inspirations and research that went into her beguiling new book. Mr Kingdon must have tried to offer some kind of irritating comfort, in which a reverend like him was well practised, because there was a sharp edge when she answered.

I appreciate the level of research that went into this story. Writing a fictional memoir of a real historical figure is an interesting idea. The read describes Elizabeth as an educated woman, her parents were both educated farmers of some wealth. What a contrast for the English born young woman to land in the wilderness of Australia, that at this stage was totally reliant on all manner of produce and supplies from England. Rationing and starvation was always at the door. Endeavouring to grow crops from a cultivated and cold land was never really going to work well in the hot, dry and uncultivated area of the first settlement. 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.

Those five words are where this book started. What they told me was that she wasn’t as bland and boring as her letters might suggest. She lived – or at least wrote – behind a mask, and just for that one instant, the mask slipped. 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. Even Kate Grenville’s author note at the end is a reminder of that. 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. There are other important, current themes too – certainly around the dispossession and treatment of Aboriginal people, and also the convicts.

So generally the letters make slightly heavy reading and you read in vain, you think what were you really like? You were a remarkable record. Historical record shows that you must have been a woman of remarkable intelligence, resilience and I think cunning to have done all the things you did but who were you really? So the letters I think are a mask. Now and again the mask slips and those five or six words are one of the places. She had asked for some lessons in astronomy from William Dawes who was also in Sydney at that early stage. She had some lessons in astronomy but she says, I mistook my abilities. Obviously astronomy was as it is a bit hard for her. She says, I mistook my abilities and I blush at my error.While we are quite sure that you always come up with lots of questions yourselves, and could quite happily chat about your chosen books forever, we have a few suggested questions to start you off: Also the shadow of land theft still is cast long and is continuing to be long overdue for a resolution.