The Lieutenant

I was interested in this book from the description, but I expected the writing to be arty and heavy going, so I didn't start reading it right away. I was pleasantly surprised to find a sophisticated yet incredibly readable historical novel that gave me a compelling sense of its time and place. In this fictionalized account lightly paralleling real events, Daniel Rooke is introduced to us as a curious boy in England, the son of a clerk. He has trouble making eye contact or understanding what people expect him to say or do, and instead buries himself in interesting mathematical puzzles. At seven, he writes the first hundred primes - which cover all the paper he has. He discovers a love for astronomy, and is sponsored by the Astronomer Royal, but when it comes time to seek a job, Dr. Vickery sadly advises Rooke that there are not many paying positions for astronomers. Even a prodigy will have to wait for an opening - a retirement or death. So Rooke joins the Marines, where he discovers to his pleasure that every sailing ship is in effect its own observatory; Rooke becomes a first-rate navigator. Eventually, he finds himself on his way to New South Wales, Australia, where he will help establish a settlement for prisoners, and attempt to observe a predicted comet that will be visible only in the southern hemisphere. Rooke is drawn as someone on the Asperger's spectrum, someone who is adept with mathematics and patterns and rules but who has some trouble working out appropriate human interaction. His character is complex, and most especially as he learns and grows. As a group of natives befriend him at his remote observatory outpost, Rooke does his best to learn their language, documenting the sounds and guessing the meanings in a pair of slim notebooks. I thought it was surprising how confidently he wrote down meanings, and then was rewarded when he came back to his notebooks and realized how arrogant he had been to think learning a few nouns would be enough, or that he could learn a language from scratch in this way without also developing a deep relationship with the people he was speaking with. The more he learns, the more he realizes how little he knows, not just of the language, but everything. As time goes on, the conflict he feels between his duties as a soldier and his duties as a friend and fellow human becomes more and more tense. I loved this novel, which I finally read in 3 sittings, for its window into linguistics, its joy of astronomy, and its exploration of the human conflicts in a soldier ordered to treat others (both prisoners and natives) as less than human. It's beautifully written, and is appropriate for teenagers as well as adults. The notebooks that William Dawes (Rooke's real-life inspiration) kept while at his observatory in Sydney Harbor have been scanned and are available online at [...]. I already found them beautiful from Kate Grenville's description of their contents, but to see the words he wrote in the original sc

In late 18th century England, Daniel Rooke is a marine lieutenant who reluctantly goes to war for the Crown in the American Revolution. He was always a square peg, bullied by other boys in his youth. A generally solitary person, he studies math and music and gazes at the stars. His true calling is astronomy and linguistics, not fighting. Physically toughened by the violence he witnesses in the war, he continues to remain an outsider to the status quo. He seeks knowledge, unity, and connectedness with the constellations and the cosmos. He is not comforted by the stern God of the chaplain's book; his heaven is within the heavenly bodies of the universe. He believes that to injure any is to damage all. After the war, Daniel is recommended to go with a regiment to remote New South Wales, where his Majesty has mapped it as an ideal place to deposit an overflow of prison convicts. Rooke goes primarily as an astronomer, as a man of science--to deduce, to calculate, and to wait for a comet. He constructs an Observatory away from the regiment and the convicts and busies himself with his sextants, his books, his graphs, and his thoughts. What follows is a stunning journey of Rooke's consciousness, instigated by the presence of the Aboriginal natives of the island. Before long, a contrast takes shape between the regiment's condescending treatment and Daniel's touching gestures toward the natives. He opens his Observatory and his soul to them, awed by their strange beauty and unfamiliar language. For the first time in his life, his heart overflows with his fate as he is magnetized and forever changed by the humanity of a community and by a child that especially and fiercely affects him. Inspired by a true event, this story is a timeless, soul-piercing tale of compassion, mercy, and empathy. It is a parable limning the harmonic essence of our link to every human being, to our poignant connection to all galaxies, to our bearing with every rock and our inextricable flow with every river. It is a beauty that cannot be destroyed by our crude conquests. It is the eloquence of humanity. A searing epic is contained in this slender novel that unfolds like a fugue. It is, finally, a beautiful, peerless image of grace and benevolence. If an artist captured this eloquence in a painting, the canvas would reveal the forgiving soul of nature and mankind.

How could I ignore Kate Grenville until now? I am so happy I have read "The Lieutenant", and I have known about "The Secret River" for a long time. Now I will read all her books... "The Lieutenant" based on facts from Australia's early colonization, is a story of Daniel Rooke from Portsmouth, England. Intellectually superior to his peers, Rooke had been singled out at school because of his extraordinary mathematical abilities. He became a scholar among the marines and his passion for astronomy and numbers, together with his high morals and natural curiosity provided him with rich, adventurous, good life. Although always an outsider, perceived as a weirdo in childhood, Rooke earned respect among the marines as a great navigator. Fighting in the American Revolution on the British side, he vowed not to be in a battle again, so when the Royal Astronomer recommended him to the party colonizing New South Wales as an astronomer with the task to look for a comet, he eagerly agreed. The new setting in Sydney Cove was a challenge to Rooke and the whole expedition. However, Daniel Rooke found there friendship and understanding he would remember on his deathbed... Rooke's connection with Tagaran, a young girl from the native tribe, resulted in his study of the tribe's language, and his improvements in interpersonal relations. Rooke, a sensitive, but alienated man, was deeply moved by the displays of cruelty and his friendship with Tagaran triggered his active fight for human rights. Kate Grenville based her novel on the life of a real Marine officer, William Dawes, who laid the foundation for learning the Aboriginal language - his study was the most comprehensive of all around his time, and his notes show the relationship with the native girl. Dawes was also later fighting for abolition of slavery in Antigua and died in poverty. Grenville wrote about him - as Daniel Rooke-with great affection, and subtlety. Her portrait of the man of great intelligence and respect for human rights is moving and engrossing. I liked Daniel Rooke instantly; he is an unforgettable character. The novel is also marvelous, a piece of Australian history intertwined with a man's life in wonderful, balanced prose.

Every now and then a book comes along that makes you want to tug on the next person you see and say, "You MUST read this!" The Lieutenant is that kind of book. It enraptured me and held me tightly in its grip so that by the end, its poignancy lingered...and I suspect will keep on doing so for quite some time. The book focuses on the character of Daniel Rooke, a loner and an outsider, a man who cannot seem to find his rightful place in life. He has a natural affinity with astronomy and the stars; his gift lies in measuring, calculating, and deducing. Eventually, he finds his way to the marines and journeys with them to New South Wales as a lieutenant. Even there, he stays distant from his fellow countrymen, preferring to live alone in his own observatory. Gradually, Rooke becomes fascinated with the natives and they, in turn, with him. For the first time of his life, he makes a real connection...with the eldest of the native children -- a girl named Tagaran, whose intelligence and understanding is like quicksilver. With Tagaran as a conduit, he begins to decipher and learn the language. He discovers "you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you.Learning a language was not a matter of joining any two points with a line. It was a leap into the other." As Rooke learns the language of connection, he also learns the language of doubt. He finds that his countrymen aren't noble or good or righteous. When he is asked to join in on a heinous act, he reflects: "It is the simplest thing in the world. If an action was wrong, it does not matter whether it succeeded or not, or how many clever steps you took to make sure it failed. If you were part of such an act, you were part of its wrong." The Lieutenant is nothing less than a roadmap on what it means to be human. It is about how everything finds its place with everything else. And, in our era of shifting ethics and morality, it is a searingly powerful lesson on how to stand up for what we know is true and right. The book is based on the story of a real life young lieutenant, William Dawes, and Ms. Grenville has made extensive use of Dawes' language notebooks. Read this book now and be richer for it!

... to squeeze gently the fingers of another person." This is a long winded explanation for the word "kamara", the Cadigal expression for something like 'my friend'. The Cadigal are one of Australia's aboriginal 'tribes' who Daniel Rooke, astronomer by passion and soldier by necessity, encounters after landing in New South Wales with the First Fleet in 1788. Rooke, a loner since childhood, highly intelligent and curious about science, but awkward in his dealings with people, is an unlikely hero for an engaging gentle story of first intercultural encounters with aboriginals as the new British administration struggles to establish the first settlement in Sydney Cove. In her typical gentle and sensitive writing Kate Grenville has achieved something admirable and exciting with this novel: by recreating a fictionalized version of the actual events of the time, she has shown how human beings can succeed in interacting across any language and cultural divide and as a result can develop friendships that will change them fundamentally. Daniel Rooke, similar to William Thornhill in The Secret River, her 2005 award winning novel, is loosely based on a real person: William Dawes, a little known soldier with an keen interest in the stars, the strange natural beauty of the local environment and, last but not least, a talent for languages. He inspired and informed Grenville's fictional treatment of a subject matter that has not lost its importance for Australians since. Beyond the specifics of historical events, Grenville has imagined a beautifully rendered intimate account of "first contact" between two very distinct cultures realized by two unusual individuals, Rooke and a young aboriginal girl, Tagaran. In fact, Grenville came across Dawes' notebooks by chance while researching her earlier book. Whereas in SECRET RIVER the aboriginals are, while strongly in evidence, without a direct voice (because she refused to invent one for them), here Grenville has Dawes notes that describe his growing friendship with a group of Cadigals, and in particular Patyegarang, the model for the fictional Tagaran, and their, often playful, attempts at learning each others language. The fictional story is created around the unique direct dialog and Dawes/Rooke's reflections on language and meaning, clearly set off in the text by italic print. Grenville evokes the calm that comes over the isolated outpost that Rooke has created for himself - a different world that makes him - and the reader - forget the reality of the early encounters between military and locals and the precarious situation the settlement finds itself in. Upon arrival Rooke had established a very basic observatory on a promontory close to, yet separated from, the new settlement at Syndey Cove. He had grown increasingly fond of this, his private space, "[a] place so strange [it] took a layer of skin off a man and left him peeled... where the solitude without matched the solitude within." Yet, it is also the sta