Daily Archives: July 22, 2010

The Colour by Rose Tremain

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Summary:

A sweeping saga of love and greed set during the mid-nineteenth century gold rush in New Zealand.

Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph’s mother Lilian, emigrate from England in search of new beginnings and prosperity in New Zealand. 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 guiltily hides the discovery from his wife and mother, and 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.

My Review:

The Colour is, on the surface, the story of a man and woman who flee England for different reasons to New Zealand in order to make their fortune. What could have been an ordinary, but hard life and… perhaps one of satisfaction and eventual comfort is taken away by a smattering of gold dust that appears in a trench that the man begins to build.

And so the fever for gold takes root. Joseph and Harriet are married and living with Joseph’s mother in “The Cob House”, a rickety, temporary home built by Joseph in a place it should not have been. Joseph is fleeing from his past, and Harriet is fleeing toward a future promise of independence. Joseph hides crippling secrets and Harriet, in her pursuit of her dream, begins to uncover them.

There were a few surprises for me in this book; the betrayal of loved ones, superstitions of the native New Zealand people, the love of a mother for her child and the ultimate disappointment it can bring. This wasn’t a feel good book, but instead it was a real, gritty but still sensual picture of the Gold Rush taking place in New Zealand during the 1860′s.

It’s very easy to see why this book made it to the 1001 Books to Read Before you Die list as it was an experience that, if I had not been exposed to the list, I probably would have never had. It’s fascinating to me the questions and curiosity that can spark from reading a book about an event that you had no previous knowledge of.

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