The Brown Baggers Book group read English Passengers by Matthew Kneale and met on February 16 to discuss it. There were mixed reviews among the book club members.
English Passengers was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, won the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award, the Australian Miles Franklin Award, and France’s Relay Prix d’Evasion.
This book is a historical novel set during the age of British colonialism and is told by about 20 different narrators. The story spans decades and follows two timelines, 30 years apart. In one storyline, a Manx captain and his band of rum smugglers have a difficult time off-loading their merchandise and end up becoming a passenger ship in order to pay fines imposed on them by British customs officials. Their passengers included a reverend who believed the Garden of Eden is located in Tasmania, a botanist, and a doctor who had sketchy views about the different races of men.
The book also followed the storyline of Peevay, a Tasmanian Aborigine, who was half-aborigine and half-white. The beginning of Peevay’s story was the time period when the British invaded Tasmania and started to decimate the Aboriginal population. The reader learns through Peevay what atrocities the Aborigines experienced at the hands of the British settlers. The two stories and timelines meet up when the Manx ship finally makes it to Tasmania.
Peevay was a favorite character of the book group. Book club members noted that Peevay’s narration had the best language and descriptions of events and really engaged the reader. Other members also enjoyed reading the captain’s storyline and how he managed his interesting passengers.
Other Information
About the author:
http://www.matthewkneale.net/
Reviews of the book:
From the New York Times
From BookPage
From Publisher’s Weekly
Similar Reads:
Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
Quarantine by Jim Crace
More Information about the history of Australia:
From the Australian Government
About British convicts who were sent to Australia
About Indigenous Australians
Join the Brown Baggers next month on Thursday, March 16 at noon for Silver Sparrow, the NEA Big Read 2017 selection.