The Secret River
A historical novel set mostly in Victorian Australia, following the life of William Thornhill, a desperately poor man who stole to survive and was eventually convicted, deported and became a settler at British colony of New South Wales (Sydney). The novel focuses on the effect of colonialism on Australian Native People (Aborigines) and how the conflict between the settlers and the natives came about.
Tropes used in The Secret River include:
- Australian Dream
- Crapsack World: Thornhill's world never stays happy for long.
- Cycle of Revenge
- Face Heel Turn: Thornhill, depending on what you think of him to start with.
- Foil: Blackwood becomes a heroic foil to Thornhill.
- Foreshadowing: The book's full of it
- Heel Realisation: A halfway one. Thornhill realises that what he is doing is evil, but in the same paragraph says he is "not an evil man".
- Moral Event Horizon: The final massacre.
- Obviously Evil: When we are introduced to Smasher Sullivan, he is standing by the body of a man he killed for stealing a cob of his corn.
- Purple Prose: parodied with the letter to Lord Hawkesbury and with Loveday. Played straight a lot.
- Victorian Britain: part one is set there
- Villain Protagonist: Thornhill by the end