Product Description

'A big, ambitious novel with a rich historical sweep and a host of narrative voices. Its subject is a vicar's ludicrous expedition in 1857 to the Garden of Eden in Tasmania, [as] meanwhile, in Tasmania itself, the British settlers are alternately trying to civilise and eliminate the Aboriginal population ... The sort of novel that few contemporary writers have either the imagination or the stamina to sustain' - Daily Telegraph

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12439 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Christopher Columbus was looking for a passage to India when he ran full-tilt into the Americas. One of the narrators of Matthew Kneale's ambitious historical novel English Passengers has more modest aspirations: Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley wants only to smuggle a little tobacco, brandy and French pornography from the Isle of Mann to a secluded beach in England. Yet somehow in the process he and his crew end up weighing anchor for Australia. Worse, they are forced to carry three temperamental Englishmen bound for Tasmania on a mission to discover the exact location of the Garden of Eden. The year is 1857 and the study of geology is beginning to make serious inroads into areas of religious doctrine. When the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson runs across a scientific treatise that puts the age of Silurian Limestone somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 years, he is scandalised: "This was despite the fact that the Bible tells, and with great clarity, that the earth was created a mere six thousand years ago". His many attempts to prove the Bible's accuracy lead, eventually, to a scientific expedition comprised of himself, Timothy Renshaw, a dilettante botanist and Dr Thomas Potter.

Now jump back 30 years, to 1828, when a revolution of sorts is stirring on the island of Tasmania. Over the years white settlers have been encroaching on aboriginal land and relations have deteriorated into violence. At the heart of the action is Peevay, a young half-breed abandoned by his aborigine mother, who had been kidnapped and raped by a white escaped convict. Now his vengeful mother is leading a war against the whites, and Peevay, desperate to win her love, has joined her. Chapters from the past narrated by Peevay and augmented by letters and dispatches from white settlers alternate with the sections told by Kewley, Wilson, Renshaw and Potter. Eventually, of course, the two timelines intersect with momentous results.

War, mutiny, shipwreck and not a little farce make English Passengers a gripping read, but it is Matthew Kneale's literary ventriloquism that renders it remarkable. In a novel with so many different points of view, the individuality of each voice stands out. There is, for instance, the mutinous Dr Potter, whose descent into paranoia and egomania results in diary entries reminiscent of a 19th-century psychotic Bridget Jones: "Manxmen = treacherous even to v. last. Self heard Brew (lashed to mainmast as per usual) instructing helmsman to steer N.N.W. when self questioned he re. this he claiming we = carried into Bay of Biscay by difficult sea currents + must set course to avoid Breton Peninsular. He pointing to distant point of land to N.N.E. claiming this = Brittany. Self = doubtful".

Perhaps the most compelling voice in English Passengers belongs to Peevay, who paints a vivid picture of aboriginal life in a foreign tongue he nonetheless makes his own:

When we sat so in the dark, after our eating, Tartoyen told us stories--secret stories that I will not say even now--about the moon and sun, and how everyone got made, from men and wallaby to seal and kangaroo rat and so. Also he told who was in those rocks and mountains and stars, and how they went there. Until, by and by, I could hear stories as we walked across the world, and divine how it got so, till I knew the world as if he was some family fellow of mine.

By the close of this epic tale, the world Peevay knew has gone forever, and the lives of the Manx sailors and English passengers have been irrevocably changed. Based on real events in Tasmanian history, Matthew Kneale's novel delivers a home truth about Australia's brutal colonial past, even as it conveys the wonder and allure of the age of exploration. --Alix Wilber

Review
"'A big, ambitious novel with a rich historical sweep and a host of narrative voices. Its subject is a vicar's ludicrous expedition in 1857 to the Garden of Eden in Tasmania, [as] meanwhile, in Tasmania itself, the British settlers are alternately trying to civilise and eliminate the Aboriginal population... The sort of novel that few contemporary writers have either the imagination or the stamina to sustain' - Daily Telegraph"

About the Author
Matthew Kneale was born in 1960. He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, including SWEET THAMES (1992), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He lives in Oxford.

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Customer Reviews

Thought provoking and funny
English Passengers is one of the best books I've read in a while. Told through the eyes of it's various protagonists, it combines adventure and slapstick on the one hand and high drama on the other. The acute and shameful ignorance of the English settlers in nineteenth century Austrailia is highlighted in the journals of Dr Potter, a racial theorist, and his arch enemy the Reverend Wilson, who is convinced that he's on a divine mission to locate the Garden of Eden. They unwittingly charter a crew of amateur smugglers in order to reach Tasmania, which turns out not to be the Utopia they'd imagined, but a desolate, brutalised colony in which almost the entire native population has been wiped out. Peevay, an aborigine whose mother was kipnapped and raped by an escaped convict, charts the decline of his people with stoicism and compassion, that is, until Dr Potter's experiments drive him to seek revenge.

This is a beautifully observed book that races along at cracking pace. Its highly entertaining and thought-provoking. Safe to say, everyone gets their just desserts. I highly recommend it.

An amazing insight into an amazing period
This suberbly written book takes quite a bit of effort to get into, but is well worth persevering. I was warned that the large number of seemingly unrelated storytellers (including Peevay, an Aborigine boy) would be quite hard to cope with at first. Once you get past this hurdle, however, Kneale gives brilliant simultaneous insights into a number of facinating worlds that are long gone. An age of exploration is displayed in parallel with the striking image of brutality that the European settlers portray, and the situation of the confused but defiant surviving groups of Aborigines.

The book really brings home the sheer arrogance of the settlers of that time, and you cannot help but feel a sense of profound pity at the extinction of a unique people. This, of course is not the first book that has done this, but Kneale's brilliant narrative style serves to really underline the different motives behind the settlers. Some cannot see any point in even giving the 'savages' a life, and others held a wish to preserve the culture (even if it was primarily with a concern for the image of Britain).This serious aspect is intertwined with a brilliant story of adventure that ends with a thriller-like sequence of events. The different threads of the brilliant (and in some cases repulsive) characters all tie together in a very satisfying manner. The true meaning of a page turner.

One of the best books I have read in years
This is an amazing novel which seems to encompass an entire era, bringing in its social, religious and racial beliefs. The characterisation is superb, especially the central characters of Kewley, Peavey and Potter. It is astonishing how Matthew Neale manages to cover such a huge canvass and yet bring such a master work to such a satisfying conclusion. If you want an unusual, mind changing and thought provoking novel which is also tragic and funny then don't miss this wonderful book.