ABOUT THE BOOK == From the Publisher == "Harley Savage is a plain, rawboned woman, a part-time museum curator and quilting expert with three failed marriages

and a heart condition. Douglas Cheeseman is a shy, gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, one marriage gone sour, and a crippling lack of physical courage.

Seeming to be incompetent was something Douglas did to protect himself, just as having a "dangerous streak" served the same purpose for Harley."

Harley and Douglas arrive in the eccentric little New South Wales country town of Karakarook at the same time; she's there to help build a heritage museum,

and he's there to demolish the quaint old Bent Bridge.

From day one, they are on a collision course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites something unexpected happens: something even better than perfection.

REVIEWS == The fifth novel by Australian author Grenville (Lilian's Story, Joan Makes History) won Britain's prestigious Orange Prize last year.

In the tiny backwater town of Karakarook, New South Wales, where everyone knows everyone else's business, two improbable outsiders fall very tentatively in love.

Douglas Cheeseman is an engineer, sent to replace a historic bridge some townsfolk believe could be made into a tourist attraction.

Museum curator Harley Savage has come from Sydney to create an exhibit of rural applied arts.

The atmosphere of the town and the sunbaked, somnolent countryside is brilliantly rendered, and so, usually, are the prickly, deeply self-doubting lead characters;

the use of a wonderfully observed dog as Harley's companion throughout is masterly.

REVIEWS == There's a smile-if not an outright belly laugh-on every page of this delicious comic novel (winner of Britain's 2001 Orange Prize), the fifth from the Australian author (Albion's Story, 1994, etc.).

The setting is the amiable little backwater of Karakarook in New South Wales, to which engineer Douglas Cheeseman is sent, to supervise the dismantling of the town's moribund landmark, the Bent Bridge.

At the same time, Harley Savage, an irreversibly plain middle-aged woman who has left three husbands and as many sons behind her, arrives in Karakarook to help its Heritage Committee build a museum celebrating indigenous arts and crafts (Harley being a sometime curator, and an expert quilter).

The tenuous, ineffably awkward relationship between Harley and Douglas is played out within a richly funny context of local folks and their doings, beginning when the two collide on the street, after which she inadvertently rescues him from an angry cow, their first "date" (for tea) leaves both with food poisoning, and they're forced to decision point when the good women of the Heritage Committee form a "blockade" against bulldozers aimed at the Bent Bridge.

Meanwhile, the town banker's beautiful wife Felicity Porcelline finds herself helplessly attracted to Karakarook's Chinese butcher (and amateur photographer) Alfred Chang-with predictably disastrous seriocomic consequences. Grenville moves among their separate (and conjoined) stories with easy skill.

The unfailingly delightful incidents dramatize the demolition of each major character's "idea of perfection": Felicity lives for physical beauty; Harley labors to subsume her vagrant "dangerous streak" into preservation of the environment and the past; Douglas worships the beauty of logical structures and the bountiful usefulness of concrete.

All-including the stray dog that attaches itself to Harley-eventually discover the considerable pleasures of human (and animal) imperfection.

Wonderful entertainment: a cockeyed romance that will have you cheering for all of these unlikely, wayward lovers.

REVIEWS ==This fifth novel by renowned Australian author Grenville (Lilian's Story), winner of the Orange Prize, presents the story of two people, both divorced, who for differing reasons are residing temporarily in a small town in the Australian bush.

How Douglas, an awkward engineer, and Harley, a plain, big-boned museum curator, meet up as well as connect with the townspeople they are to work with is described with a compassionate eye for human frailty.

While unfolding the lives of Douglas and Harley, Grenville depicts the life of the town and some of its eccentric inhabitants, using an effective blend of humor, sensuality, and pathos.

She nicely contrasts urban and rural living and shows how even those who work to preserve the historical past may themselves remain haunted by their own personal histories. Both Grenville's description of small-town life in a harsh and rugged environment and her endearing portrayal of the minds and hearts of two people make for a satisfying and memorable read.

MORE ABOUT == Catherine Elizabeth Grenville AO (born 14 October 1950 in Sydney) is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection, and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Secret River. The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and it was also shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award.

Her novels have been published worldwide and have been translated into many languages. Three have been adapted into feature films.

In 1980 she went to the University of Colorado at Boulder to do a master's degree in creative writing.

She returned to Australia in 1983 and became a sub-editor at SBS Television in the subtitling department.

She won a literary grant in 1986 and left SBS to pursue her writing.

Since the early 1990s she has been an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney.

In 2006 she was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts by the University of Technology, Sydney under the supervision of Glenda Adams and Paula Hamilton.

She has also been awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney, the University of NSW, and Macquarie University.

Kate Grenville's reputation as a short story writer was made by the publication in 1984 of her collection Bearded Ladies.

On its publication, Peter Carey wrote "Here is someone who can really write".

Lilian's Story was her first published novel (1985) and won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award.

It was loosely based on the story of Bea Miles, known in Sydney for her eccentric public behaviour.

It has become one of Australia's best-loved novels and in 1996 was made into a film starring Ruth Cracknell and Toni Collette; Collette won the Australian Film Institute award for supporting actress for her performance as the young Lilian.

Dreamhouse followed in 1986, and appeared as the 1994 film Traps. Joan Makes History – the recipient of an Australian Bicentennial Commission – was published in 1988.

In 1994 Grenville returned to the characters and setting of Lilian's Story with a companion novel – Dark Places – that re-tells the events of the earlier novel from the point of view of Lilian's incestuous father. Dark Places won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 1995. (In the US this novel is titled Albion's Story.)

The Idea of Perfection appeared in 2000 and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, at the time Britain's richest literary award.

In 2006 The Secret River was published, the first of Grenville's books that take Australia's colonial past, and relations with Australia's indigenous people, as their subject.

The Secret River was inspired by the story of Grenville's own great-great-great grandfather, a convict sent to Australia from London in 1806.

This book won the Commonwealth Prize, the Christina Stead Award, and the NSW Premier's Community Relations Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Searching for The Secret River (2006) is a memoir about the research and writing of the novel, tracing the journey of the author's increasing awareness of how Australia's colonial past informs its present.

The Lieutenant (2008) is set thirty years earlier than The Secret River. Based on the historical notebooks of Lieutenant William Dawes, it tells the story of the friendship between a soldier with the First Fleet and a young Gadigal girl.

These two novels together explore something of the complexity of black-white relations in Australia's past.

Sarah Thornhill (2011) is the sequel to The Secret River and takes up the story of William Thornhill's youngest daughter.

It can be read as a stand-alone novel, without reference to The Secret River.

Her latest book is One Life: My Mother's Story, in which Grenville uses the fragments of memoir that her mother left to construct the story of a woman whose life - in some ways typical of her times, in other ways remarkable - spanned a century of tumult and dramatic change. 

Grenville has also written or co-written several books about the writing process which are widely used in creative writing workshops and in schools and universities: The Writing Book, Writing from Start to Finish, and Making Stories (co-written with Sue Woolfe).

Grenville has been awarded fellowships from the International Association of University Women and from the Literary Arts Board of the Australia Council.

Her novels have all been published in the UK and US as well as Australia and have been translated into many languages, including German, Swedish, French, Hebrew and Chinese.

Awards and Nominations

Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) in 2008

Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of New South Wales in 2010

Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2012

Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Macquarie University in 2013

The Dixson Medal awarded by the Library Council of New South Wales in 2014

Prizes

1984 – The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for Lilian's Story

1995 – Victorian Premier's Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction for "Dark Places"

2001 – Orange Prize for Fiction for The Idea of Perfection

2006 – Commonwealth Writers' Prize for her novel The Secret River

2006 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for The Secret River

2006 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Community Relations Commission Award for The Secret River

Shortlisted

2006 – The Secret River – Miles Franklin Award and the Man Booker Prize.

Bibliography

Short stories

Bearded Ladies: Stories (1984)

Novels

Lilian's Story (1985)

Dreamhouse (1986)

Joan Makes History: A Novel (1988)

Dark Places (1994) (alternative title: Albion's Story)

The Idea of Perfection (1999)

The Secret River (2005)

The Lieutenant (2008)

Sarah Thornhill, sequel to The Secret River, (2011)

Non-fiction

The Writing Book: A Manual for Fiction Writers (1990)              

Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written (1993), with Woolfe, Sue

Writing from Start to Finish: a Six-Step Guide (2001)

Searching for the Secret River (2006)

One Life: My Mother's Story (2015)

The Case Against Fragrance (2017)

Translations == Grenville's work has appeared in: Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Czech, Bulgarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Norwegian, Greek, Mandarin and Japanese.

Science Fiction Fantasy Modern Literature

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