REVIEW: The Ripping Tree by Nikki Gemmell

Nikki Gemmell is one of Australia’s best known authors, having written both fiction and non-fiction throughout her long career, although I confess this is my first time reading one of her works. Her writing in The Ripping Tree is evocative and beautiful and it’s clear why she has gained her high-standing within the Australian literary community.

Nikki Gemmell

The Ripping Tree opens with a grandmother reading letters to her grandchildren about an illustrious historical estate, Willowbrae, where the family had just visited. These letters are the literary device used as the catalyst for a trip into the past, returning to Australia’s colonial history of the early 1800’s

A young girl is deposited on the steps of Willowbrae, the sole survivor of a nearby shipwreck. The town is fascinated about how she made it there, only she knows that a native man saved her by carrying her to the estate. Having been promised in marriage to a man she has never met, she feigns amnesia in relation to her name to try and forge a new and independent life in this strange land. The family calls her Poss, and the narrative covers the seven days following the wreck. As she tries to recover from the trauma of the event, and find her feet in this new world, she begins to uncover secrets hidden behind the façade of a respectable white family.

Gemmell explores and exposes horrors within Australia’s history with the Indigenous people of the land, her beautifully descriptive prose heightening the crimes committed without sensationalism, thus increasing the power of the narrative. The book is worth reading just for this education and revelation alone.

The beautiful writing and the historical context make The Ripping Tree a valuable reading experience. It’s likely to become another important classic within the Australian literary canon for educating future generations on the truth of the darkness in our history — one that many prefer not to face.

—The Ripping Tree by Nikki Gemmell (HarperCollins Australia) is out now.

The Ripping Tree

Limited Signed Copies Available!

by Nikki Gemmell

Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae. Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be and a whole new life opens up to her. But as she's drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren't quite as they seem...

Order NowRead More

No comments Share:

About the Contributor

Karen Robinson