A Room Made of Leaves

What if Elizabeth Macarthur – wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney – had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear – at last! – what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality. Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.

‘There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest writers‘ -- The Sunday Mail
‘Kate Grenville is a literary alchemist, turning the leaden shadow of the historical Elizabeth Macarthur into a luminescent, golden woman for our times. Intelligent, compassionate, strategic and dead sexy, Grenville’s Macarthur is an unforgettable character who makes us question everything we thought we knew about our colonial past. A polished gem of a novel by a writer who is as brave as she is insightful. I simply loved it.’ -- Clare Wright, author of the Stella Prize-winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers. Her early works have become modern classics and are admired by critics and readers around the world. Her 1992 novel, The Idea of Perfection, was a bestseller and winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain's most valuable literary award.In 2006 Kate Grenville was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the NSW Premier's Literary Award for The Secret River, and the novel was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Kate lives in Sydney with her family.Grenville's A Room Made of Leaves won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Valerie is a British-Australian actress with an extensive list of credits in theatre, film and television. Recent screen appearances include the feature film, Wish You Were Here, the award-winning Black & White & Sex and Rip Tide, which debuted at the 2017 Sydney Film Festival. On the small screen Valerie’s work includes The Crew’s Ship, Devil’s Playground, Dead Lucky and The Let Down. For her stage work, Valerie has received nominations for Helpmann, Sydney Theatre and Glug awards.

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