The Lieutenant

by Kate Grenville

Harper Collins

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, May 2009

Thomas Rooke was a clever lad with an aptitude for science and numbers.  His great misfortune, however, is that his parents have no money. At age 8, he is sent to the Portsmouth Naval Academy where “the cold space of the bleak dormitory sucked out his spirit and left a shell behind.”  Bullied unmercifully, he realizes he must hide his cleverness.  But luckily for Rooke, his aptitude for astronomy was noticed and “a door opened in a world that had seemed nothing but wall.”

As a young Lieutenant, he is sent to Australia, sailing with the First Fleet of convict ships to the new land. He builds an astronomy shack some distance from the naval base and sets his daily regimen of readings and sightings.  He works at night, left alone, on the whole, by the New South Wales Governor, but not by the local aborigines.  Curiosity gets the better of them, and they watch, at first from afar, then closer until his daily routine includes a cluster of women and children around a fire near his hut.  Without the bigotries of upper class England,  “Rooke was aware of witnessing something unrepeatable and irreversible.  He was watching one universe in the act of encountering another.”

Into Rooke’s isolated life comes a young aboriginal girl, Patyegarang, whose curiosity about him and his culture equals his curiosity about hers.  They exchange words, then sentences, teaching each other language.  Grenville’s portrayal of their evolving relationship is masterful, never crossing the line as their friendship solidifies through mutual understanding and trust.

Grenville’s easy writing leads us gently toward the inevitable cultural collision, building subtle tension as the playing field becomes more and more uneven. And woven throughout this fictionalized history is a moving and compassionate glimpse into the proud intelligence of the Aboriginal tribes in that moment of hesitation before good intentions are swept aside in the name of queen and country.

The Lieutenant is loosely based on the diaries of Lieutenant William Dawes, who arrived in Australia with the First Fleet.  The records he left of words and language structure  “of the indigenous people of the Sydney area is by far the most extensive we have (today).”

Kate Grenville has won international awards for her fiction.  The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize and The Secret River was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Sydney, Australia.