Product Description

This is a writer whose breadth of imagination and supple prose transcend the genre: she is one of the finest writers in English' Daily Telegraph. Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand 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 is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their destinies. By turns both moving and terrifying, it is a story of the quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and in the process discover the sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of happiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10107 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rose Tremain has long been one of the most vigorous and imaginative of novelists; her sweeping narratives (set against the most vividly realised of canvases) have made her books as dramatic and assured as anything being written today. The Colour represents a further burnishing of her considerable talents; it is a powerful drama of greed and aspiration set in the New Zealand Gold Rush of the mid-19th Century.

Tremain's protagonists are Harriet and Joseph Baxter, who (along with Joseph's mother) leave England for the promise of the new world that New Zealand represents. Needless to say, their relocation comes with many attendant (and nigh-insoluble) problems. But their struggle against the land continues apace until Joseph discovers gold in a nearby creek and ill-advisedly conceals the find from his mother and his wife. Gold fever takes an all-consuming grip upon him, and he leaves the family-owned farm to traverse the gold fields of the Southern Alps. There he will find a strange fate: one that affects those he has left behind as well as him.

As a study of human nature in extremis, this could well be Tremain’s most impressive book. Lacking the elegant stylishness of Restoration, The Colour grants us a fastidiously rendered picture of life lived at the sharp edge. And while her characters are confronted with terrifying decisions that few of us are ever likely to encounter, Tremain’s narrative gifts make it easy to identify with the decisions (both wise and catastrophic) that her characters take. The sense of period is forcefully conveyed, and while this is not as ingratiating a read as such earlier Tremain books as The Swimming Pool Season, her new level of ambition makes it perhaps the author’s most important book yet. --Barry Forshaw

The Gloss
'Tremain is the finest of historical fiction writers'

From the Publisher
The Colour is a gripping drama of sacrifice and greed set during the mid-nineteenth-century gold rush in New Zealand.

Customer Reviews

Exceptional writing
Perhaps I was reading a different book to the one described my most of the Amazon reviewers here. The one I read was a lyrical, majestic tale of human frailty set against an epic backdrop of cruel mountains and with meticulously researched attention to historical detail.
The threads of the book are woven skilfully and we, as readers, are kept guessing until the end, the principal characters - each real and vulnerable - taking us along with them as they struggle to come to terms with the cold consequences of their past choices. The writing is subtle and measured: I get the feeling that the author chooses each word with great care, and her selections are invariably right, as we both explore the psyche of people living on the edge and enjoy a rollicking good tale of gold and greed and hope.
So, don't be off by adjectives such as 'brutal' and 'depressing' - this book is compelling, vivid, and most satisfying - as a professional writer myself I can only admire greatly what Rose Tremain has achieved here.

A strong story in a vivid historical landscape
There are some harsh reviewers out there. I found this book a highly compelling read, with well-drawn characters and strong, interlinking storylines which kept me interested right to the very end. No doubt those who have been to New Zealand's South Island (particularly in winter) will find this a more satisfying book than those who have not - I am sure it helps to have some sort of mental image of both the beauty and the harshness of the landscape in which the story is set.

It has its faults. It suffers from the apparent belief among contemporary authors that, unless a book contains a strange element of magic and mysticism, the reader will lose interest. This is not so - most books which try this obvious and tired trick fall down as a result. In this book, this unnecessary flummery arises in the relationship between the Maori woman, Pare, and the English boy, Edwin. On one level, this strand of the story is a touching (and ultimately tragic) tale of childhood imagination and clashing imperial and indiginous cultures, and it would have been better left at that. The introduction of Maori spiritualism seemed to me to be somewhat forced and shallow, and wholly unnecessary.

And why, oh why, do publishers of books set in strong geographical locations NEVER include a map? I dug out my own map of New Zealand, which greatly assisted in conceptualising the action, but a one-page map in the book itself would be so easy to include and would make such a difference.

But otherwise, a thoroughly good read - a little depressing, but not without its upbeat moments. The three main Blackstone characters are all a little bit useless in their varying degrees (and so more believable and engaging), and they all make mistakes, and the changing relationships between them seemed to me to be both convincing and sympathetically human. And the descriptions on nineteenth-century New Zealand life and landscape are truly excellent. Compared to the other books I have read by Ms Tremain, it is certainly streets ahead of the dreadful "The Way I Found Her", if not quite as rich and unusual as (although probably more compellingly readable than) "Music and Silence". I recommend it strongly.

Somewhat fools' gold
Rose Tremain deceives her reader in this evocative novel. At first we expect the hero of the story to be Joseph, the ambitious, ostensibly well-meaning new husband to Harriet and devoted son to Lilian. However, the focus of the book shifts in a clumsy, but not totally off-putting, way to Harriet, Lilian and other minor characters.

Tremain's gift is in making even the slightest, least important character in a book live and breathe. Sefton, the Scottish gold-diggers and even the never-present wife of a character are vividly drawn.

However, this is quite a depressing book: don't expect happy-ever-afters. It deals with its subject brutally, and the bizarre surreal subplot involving an English schoolboy and his Maori governness would have made an interesting novella in itself rather than being thrown in to distract from the main story. Having subplots running like veins through a book is all very well as long as they all mishmash in with the main plot, and in "The Colour" I don't think this entirely happens.

However - it's well worth a read, for fans of Rose Tremain and those new to her. I would recommend "The Way I Found Her" or "Restoration" as a perfect introduction to this author though.