Before picking up A River Town, I hadn’t read anything by Keneally, who also wrote Schildler’s List, but, wow, he can write. It was nearly impossible for me to read this book quickly: the characters and locations are so well drawn that anything less than a deliberate reading seems insulting.Kempsey, the eponymous river town, is located in the Macleay river valley just inland of the east coast of Australia, about 300 miles north of Sydney in New South Wales. The narrative takes place in the (southern hemisphere) summer of 1900, as Australia seeks to become an independent commonwealth in the British empire.Most non-native residents of Kempsey are English or Irish immigrants, and grocer Tim Shea is no exception. He and his wife Kitty left Ireland seeking the better life offered in the new land. The new land, however, has its own set of challenges, even for a good man like Shea.Colonial Australia is committing troops to the Boer War in South Africa. Shea is among those unconvinced the war is right, but the pro-war patriots in Kempsey take a dim view of his resistance.Tim has to sort out his relationship with Bandy Habash, one of the few Muslim immigrants in the Macleay valley. Tim has aversions to him both involuntary—arising from British distrust of non-Christian non-white peoples—and willful: Bandy shines an unwelcome public spotlight on Tim’s life. Yet Bandy is earnest and helpful, and the relationship between the two is complex and rewarding.The Shea family is another fine Keneally creation: wife Kitty, full of common sense and distrustful of Tim’s whimsy, wild son John, and deliberate daughter Anna.Dead strangers, orphaned children, Australian politics, new family members, and the plague are all involved in the plot, but this is not a plot-driven story. The characters are king, and it’s lovely when Keneally sets them loose.
This story, set at the turn of the 20th century in rural New South Wales, was helpful to my cultural literacy as a relatively recent immigrant. It illustrated the relationships between classes and races, the rural worldview and power structure, several points of view on Australian involvement in the Boer War, a bit about the plague that struck Sydney, and many words and terms from that era that I had never encountered before. It was more than that, of course, it was a good story and a pleasure to read.
What do You think about A River Town (1996)?
This is the tale of a reluctant hero, an endearing, if flawed, man whose stubborn integrity is nearly his undoing. Vividly conveying the spirit of the times, Tom Keneally's vibrant portrait of the river town of Kempsey manifests the inescapability of human malice in a place of natural splendour.(first paragraph below;)"On a hot morning in the New Year, a black police wagon went rolling along Kempsey's Belgrave Street from the direction of West Kemspey. All of this in the valley of the Macleay on the lush and humid north coast of New South Wales. The wagon attracted a fair amount of notice from the passers-by and witnesses. Many shopowners and customers in fact came out onto the footpaths to watch this wagon be drawn by, and some of them waved mockingly at the dark, barred window of the thing. Tim Shea of T. Shea - General Store stayed behind his counter but looked out with as much fascination as anyone as the wagon passed, two constables on the driver's seat, and Fry the sergeant of police riding behind."Some of my colonial ancestors settled in Kempsey, and "A River Town" amply filled in the brutality and beautiful atmosphere of the times.
—Velvetink
