The Colour: A Novel - Hardcover

Tremain, Rose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374126054 ISBN 13: 9780374126056

Verlag: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

A sweeping historical novel about love, ruin, and redemption in nineteenth-century New Zealand

Rose Tremain’s new novel is a saga of love and greed set during the mid-nineteenth-century gold rush in New Zealand. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from England, along with Joseph’s mother, Lilian, in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek, he hides the discovery from both his wife and mother and becomes obsessed with the riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new goldfields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of “the colour,” rush to their destinies.

Harriet decides to pursue her own journey toward an uncertain future. But nothing has prepared her for what happens to her when she arrives at the gold diggings. Amid squalor and confusion, burning heat and icy flood, Harriet comes face-to-face with the true cost of desire.

Beautifully written, hauntingly evocative, and by turns both moving and terrifying, The Colour is the story of a quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and in the process discover what it is that makes men and women happy.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rose Tremain is the author of nine novels, including Music & Silence, and her work has been translated into fourteen languages. She lives in Norfolk, England, with the biographer Richard Holmes.

Rezensionen

*Starred Review* Most American readers are familiar with the California gold rush, for which both nonfiction and fictional treatments abound (for the latter, see Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune [1999] and Portrait in Sepia [2001]). But few will have even basic knowledge of the New Zealand gold rush of the same century. And while most appreciators of historical fiction will have previous reading experience with frontier novels, particularly those of the beloved Willa Cather, few will have encountered fictional depictions of immigrant life in the wilds of nineteenth-century New Zealand, where pioneers faced the same kind of excitement and tribulation--freedom with a price tag, in other words. Regardless, readers will be swept up here in the tale of a newly married couple, Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, who have left English shores to stake out a new life in the New Zealand wilderness. But gold--the "colour"--gets under Joseph's and Harriet's skin, and they are drawn to play out their destinies in light of how the discovery of gold releases them to their individual needs but separates them from their mutual ones. Astonishingly, Tremain lives up to the soaringly high standards set by The Restoration (1989), her splendid evocation of seventeenth-century England. Her new novel, like its well-received predecessor, is authentically detailed, compellingly plotted, and literarily accomplished. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Readers familiar with British writer Tremain's magisterial historical novel, Restoration, or her psychologically acute study of madness, Music & Silence, will not be surprised at the accuracy of historical detail in this elegant and dramatic novel about the mid-19th-century gold rush in New Zealand or by her nuanced portrait of the disintegration of a marriage. Writing at the top of her form, she tells a complex story centering on two immigrants to New Zealand, whose recent marriage represents new hopes for both of them. Joseph Blackstone fled England to rid himself of memories of a shameful act; cold and secretive, he is emotionally constricted by guilt. Strong, spirited ex-governess Harriet Salt has narrowly avoided spinsterdom; to her, New Zealand represents the freedom to explore new horizons. Together with Joseph's mother, they attempt to build a farm on the flats outside of Christchurch, but when Joseph finds gold in the creek, he becomes obsessed by "the colour," as the fabulous metal is known. Abandoning both women, he travels by ship to the west coast, where he encounters hundreds of other desperate men and the clamorous, filthy, dehumanizing conditions in which they live. Later, when Harriet attempts to follow him by land, she cannot cross the gorge between the Southern Alps, justly called "the stairway from hell." By the time she does join him, each of them despises the other, yet the discovery of gold binds them in a new way. From this point on, the narrative, already full of subtleties and surprises, becomes riveting, as nature and human nature collide. There's a wonderful subplot about the mystical connection of a white boy and his Maori nurse, and an inspired depiction of a Chinese gardener who peddles his vegetables and becomes the instrument of Harriet's salvation. With its combination of vivid historical adventure and sensual, late-blooming romance, it's hard to see how this novel can miss winning a new audience for the immensely talented Tremain.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0374126054
• ISBN 13: 9780374126056
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar