Interesting insight on Colonial times
The Making of Martin Sparrow
AUTHOR: Peter Cochrane PUBLISHER: Viking, Penguin RRP: $32.99
REVIEWER: Joanne Marsh
HISTORIAN Peter Cochrane uses his extensive knowledge of early Australian history to create a rich and vibrant landscape for the setting of The Making of Martin Sparrow.
The untamed Hawkesbury region, west of Sydney, immediately immerses the reader into a struggling community where grain is the only real currency of trade.
It’s a brutal and isolated colonial map-dot filled with emancipated convicts, rough justice and tenuous links to the strands of civilisation in far off Sydney Town.
As the catastrophic Hawkesbury River flood of 1806 rips through the settlement, former convict, and now farmer, Martin Sparrow is left on the edge of despair.
Already in debt, loveless, and forlorn, Sparrow is desperate to escape what he sees as a desultory existence.
When he is rescued from the aftermath of the flood, he is given a chance to repay his debts and renew his land, however, Sparrow is inherently lazy and all he sees is a future of hard work with little recompense.
He is very much a glass-half-empty character so when even his infatuation with a local whore appears doomed he starts to listen to rumours of an earthly paradise on the other side of the mountain range which promises a life of no work and much pleasure.
His pursuit of an easy life draws him into a web of rough and cunning men who know how to survive beyond the law.
His reliance on these shady characters takes him into dangerous territory where friendships are not to be trusted and it is here that Sparrow learns what it takes to survive.
The irony of the making of Martin Sparrow is that he learns to live, and be what he thinks is a man, by the killing of others.
Driven by his own sense of justice, Sparrow carves his way to a version of freedom for himself.
Sparrow is not a likeable character – his lack of redeeming features makes it difficult to empathise with his plight.
Throughout the story, the reader is driven to ponder the course of Sparrow’s actions and their sometimes reprehensible results.
Read this book for its interesting insight into the early times of colonial Australia but don’t expect to like the characters.