I really thought I'd like this novel however, I gave up about halfway through and skipped to the end to read the last couple of chapters. The beginning was interesting but it just failed to keep my attention by the beginning of the middle. ( )

The 'founding' of Australia by British soldiers and convicts seemed a fantastic struggle over adversity. The ships arrived at what is now Sydney Harbor, to find a land far more barren than reported 17 years before. The crossing had been more than miserable, the rations during and after were short, the thousand or so people housed at first in tents, then wattle-and-daub, for the most part. There were many more men, both convicts and soldiers, than women, and most soldiers were not allowed to bring their wives and families, with the predictable consequences.

And death was all around. From fevers and hanging, starvation and accident, fighting and murders. Among the natives, smallpox is devastating. Everyone was a captive of this exile.

To raise spirits, Farquahar's The Recruiting Officer is to be performed by inmates for the birthday of George III. No one notes the irony of celebrating the king of a country they have been thrown out of, a king reputed mad and possibly dead. Amid the circumstances of misery, boredom and menial work, the play offers something new and the casting call is long. The director is in no way skilled in this work, but his natural talent becomes evident, as do the talents of the often questionable people he selects.

Many events move this story along, many characters sometimes hard to keep straight in the beginning. Keneally drops in historical note from the American colonies and that war, still fresh, the struggles of colonists in Sound America, and other notes that sometimes startle the reader to realize how long ago this takes place.

This is accurate historical fiction. All this really happened, including the performance, the liaisons, the murders, the hangings, details drawn from diaries and reports. Keneally provides an epilogue where he lists, as much as is possible, the future of each of the main characters in this narrative. It can break your heart. ( )

Well. Not exactly the kind of thing that I'm interested in. I will admit that it was a joy watching the play come together in the midst of the wild outback situation filled with criminal lags and wild natives. As well as watch Ralph figure out his situation and his feelings during the course of putting together of the performance. I learned a great deal about the initial stages of Britain sending its criminals to Australia, the difficulties entailed as well as how the great physical and temporal divide affected both Marine and criminal. So, a decent read. ( )

Thomas Keneally brings history to life in a story rich with detail and humanity. Lieutenant Ralph Clark is the honest and fallible playmaker, uniting the early settlers of Sydney, Australia - the 'lags', or convicts, and those sent to guard them, the officials and marines also exiled from home.

The plot meanders along from character to character, from geographical discovery to personal revelation. The historical background and individual vignettes are loosely linked together by Ralph's efforts to rehearse and stage an amateur production of Farqhar's 'The Recruiting Officer', cast with the convict inhabitants of the penal colony, but the real attraction is the descriptive and personable fleshing out of the men and women in the real Lieutenant Clark's journal and letters. This work of fiction really sends the reader back in time to Australia in the 1780s, and Ralph becomes a dear friend - I fell deeply for Keneally's portrait of his character, and wished him all the best with his tentative, earnest 'marriage' to one of the 'she-lags' he initially mistrusts and avoids.

Informative, evocative, with a streak of droll Australian humour to lighten the dialogue. ( )

Australian convicts and overseers stage a play and explore their relationships. I suppose people might find it interesting that the characters were broadly based on real people, but I put the book down feeling a bit 'meh'. ( )