Unsettled by Kate Grenville

STAFF REVIEW

Unsettled is an intimate, gripping exploration of Grenville’s ancestors and her place in Australia today. She doesn’t shy away from difficult questions and truths, choosing to face her family’s colonial settler past head on. With her engrossing prose and sense of place, this is a literary pilgrimage in beautiful form.

Reviewed by Mahli

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What does it mean to be on land taken from others?

‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’

Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River.

More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, “on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation”.

So she decides to go on a kind of pilgrimage, back through the places her family stories happened, and put the stories and the First People back into the same frame, on the same country, to try to think about those questions. This gripping book is the result of that journey.

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, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places, the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection, A Room Made of Leaves and, most recently, Restless Dolly Maunder, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her works of non-fiction include One Life- My Mother’s Story, The Case Against Fragrance and Elizabeth Macarthur’s Letters.

01 Apr 2025

Unsettled by Kate Grenville ISBN 9781760645649