A historical balancing act

In her new novel, Kate Grenville again makes use of a real character from the days of early settlement. But she never forgets she is writing fiction, she tells Catherine Keenan writing in The Age. Pic of author also from The Age.

IT'S A RISK, SHE KNOWS.

IN the follow-up to her hugely successful novel The Secret River, Kate Grenville once again dips into the early history of white settlement of Australia.

Once again, she has written a book inspired by real events - something that last time led her, unwittingly, into a controversy she fiercely hopes will not be ignited again. The cover of The Lieutenant even looks a little like the original cover of The Secret River. But this book is tighter, leaner, and Grenville expects it to "feel like a bit of a letdown".

After all, it's hard to beat sales of half a million worldwide, a shortlisting for the Man Booker Prize, and a tranche of other awards, including a Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Grenville sees the two books very much as companion pieces - "it's the yang to The Secret River's yin" - but in the end, The Lieutenant was simply the book she had to write. "It really did just kind of grab me by the throat, the way books are supposed to, and rip me along. It really was a kind of compulsion."

Grenville lights up just remembering its genesis. She was researching The Secret River, reading Tim Flannery's The Birth of Sydney, when she found extracts from the language journals of William Dawes. He was, says Grenville, "a kind of 18th-century nerd".

Read the full review from The Age online.

And you can also check out Kate Grenville's website here. This includes an interview with Kate and an extract from this new title.