The Lieutenant - Softcover

"A deft historical tale of discovery . . . [Dawes'] qualities shine lambently through Grenville's elegantly calibrated prose . . . The lasting impression of her novel is not of drama, but of a lovely, watchful stillness: a sort of astronomy of the human heart" (Jane Shilling Sunday Telegraph 2009-01-25)

"Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . the reader shares the excitement of his widening consciousness . . . Grenville writers with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery . . . [and] explores the natural rifts that arise between settlers and native people with a deep understanding of the ambiguities inherent in such conflicts. She occupies the mind of Rooke with a kind of vivid insistence, and his isolation - and moral dilemmas - become ours." (Jay Parini Guardian 2009-01-31)

"Grenville is one of Australia's most popular writers, and this novel is a triumph. Read it at once." (The Times)

"Grenville's prose is clear and clean, employing a gently leading storytelling style that is especially welcome with a foreign land and a foreign time . . . Grenville has brought imagination and compassion to the source of so much of Australia's retroactive hand-wringing. What distinguishes her portrayal of Aboriginal culture is that for once appreciation, sympathy and admiration get the better of impotent guilt." (Lionel Shriver Daily Telegraph)

"A compelling narrative . . . an intelligent, spare, always engrossing imagining of first contact, in which the fictionalization of history allows a comment about current postcolonial race relationships which escapes the didacticism of special pleading." (Patrick Denman Flanery Times Literary Supplement 2009-01-30)

"A particular kind of stillness marks Kate Grenville's characters out as uniquely hers . . . Between the words and among them, this is a profoundly uplifting novel - one that leaves you understanding Rooke's premise: that "Truth [needs] hundreds of words, or none."" (Independent)

"In lucid prose and perfectly measured strides, Grenville lays down her riveting tale. A novel aglow with empathy, its author's capacious visions still deliver an elemental thrill." (Stephanie Cross Daily Mail 2009-01-30)

"The Lieutenant is a lovely example of historical fiction at its best: complex, demanding, and always revealing." (Independent on Sunday 2010-02-07)

"In this novel, morally troubling issues of exploitation and hypocrisy carry reverberations well beyond the convincingly portrayed historical moment." (Sunday Telegraph)

"This engrossing story evokes the excitement of discovery and the beauty of an unspoilt land." (Anthony Gardner Scottish Daily Mail 2009-02-08)