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5 comments about The Tarasov Saga: From Russia Through China to Australia.

1. This is an unusually fine first book. A riveting story about a courageous, strong-willed woman and her family in their sojourn half a world across. Fascinating characters in all walks of life. Interesting historical details that I have not come across elsewhere.
   Memorable personal episodes abound.
   My favorite humorous one occurred in 1941. As a budding young pianist, Gary was given the key to his aunt's sumptuous apartment so he could practice on the concert grand - with the top up, of course. One afternoon, he let himself in and found his aunt and uncle asleep in the bedroom. Being considerate, he delayed the start of his practice until they awoke. He parked himself in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom. Suddenly, his aunt got up to go to the bathroom. She was stark naked. Gary was speechless - looking at his first naked woman ever in his young nine years of life. His aunt sensed his presence, turned, saw him and started to scream, yelling at him to get out. His uncle woke up and jumped out of bed. He also was naked. He also started to scream. Bedlam! as Nash writes.
   You've just got to read this book for its humor, sadness and strength of character exhibited, culminating in a happy ending.



2. I was involved in a novel when I purchased a copy ot the Tarasov Saga. I intended to keep it in reserve for when I finished the novel.
   Out of curiosity I started reading the Tarasov Saga. Once I started the novel had to wait. I became involved with the story of a struggling mother and at the same time gathered a good understanding of what Russia must have been like at that time.
   The stort of foreign groups living in designated areas in China was also fascinating. The numerous photographs in the booked also helped me. I often found myself referring back to the photographs and maps to help my understanding. A good read



3. I found the book most interesting especially because of the historical insights that the author shared about life in Russia, China and finally in Australia. The contrasts between life in the Far East and life now in Australia for Gary and his family is amazing and it is wonderful to note the appreciation he has for the differences.
   I always love stories about people and what they have coped with in their lives. Certainly Gary Nash will have inherited some of the strong and stoic qualities that his grandmother showed.
   I found the book very enjoyable to read and the family tree was very useful to continuously revert back to as the story progressed. It has also been written in a very positive way and I would guess that this is why the Tarasov family managed to get to Australia and be successful.
   Most enjoyable - well worth reading!



4. The Tarasov Saga is a very absorbing book, not only because of its account of a remarkable journey over 25 years of the extended Tarasov family, initially fleeing from Russia through China and the Phillipines to Australia, but also for the historical perspective of life in Russia and China in the first half of the 20th century.
   I have known the author, both as a work colleague and a friend for over 30 years but, Gary being a very private person, all I knew of his background was that he was of White Russian origin and had lived in China before coming to Australia! The to read this book and discover the astonishing story of all that happened from the time of the Russian Revolution and its effects on the Tarasovs, individually and collectively, until the first of them arrived in Australia in 1949, made for compelling reading.I am not qualified to comment on Gary's literary style or technique, but the way he has portrayed each member of the family, their strengths and their weaknesses brought them to life so that, not only were they believable, but one could visualise their individual contributions to this saga.
   This book is about courage, determination and resilience, and what can be achieved by people who are single-minded and motivated to seek a better life after many years of deprivation
   and hardship.
   In particular, the reader is left in no doubt of the author's great affection and admiration for his Grandmother Aida and her monumental efforts to ensure that the family survived their epic journey and, bar one member, all be reunited in Australia.
   I thoroughly commend this book which is not only an enjoyable read but in an age where the refugee problem is a world-wide one, provides an understanding of the hardships and traumas that constantly confront refugees on the move.
   It is an intensely human story which reinforces basic values and beliefs, in an era where many consider these things to be unimportant.
   It would be nice to think that an enterprising producer might think that there is enough meat and drama in The Tarasov Saga to provide the basis for a film or TV series. It certainly has all the ingredients.



5. This book details the adventures of a large family as they seek safe haven from communism. In the beginning of the book, the author's mother and father are living in Czarist Russia, where his father is an officer in the army just prior to the outbreak of World War I. The small family grows to five children during the war. As the revolution begins to take hold, the father joins the loyalist White Russians and is dragged further and further east with them. His mother is left to manage alone with the five children. As it became clear that, as White Russians, they were not welcome in the Soviet Union, the mother decides to make her way east with the children, although she had no money and only a vague idea of where her husband might be. After a series of misadventures in which she is forced to leave the children behind, she eventually finds her husband and gets all five children back with her in a city in China that had a large Russian refugee population. The entire family made its home in China for the next twenty years, until a second communist revolution made them refugees once again.

   The story is quite well written, with amazing recall of details from long ago adventures. The stories describing everyday life in the Russian refugee communities of pre-Communist China provide a fascinating glimpse into a very little known way of life. On the one hand, it is amazing that the entire large family was able to make it out of Russia and then out of China, but on the other hand, it was precisely because they had so many people working together in the family that made it possible.

3 comments about Searching for the Secret River.

1. In this memoir, Kate Grenville provides some insights into both the drafting of her novel `The Secret River' and her search for her family history. Ms Grenville is a descendant of early settler Solomon Wiseman. She had grown up knowing the outline of his story: his arrival in Sydney as a convict in 1806, the establishment of his business on the Hawkesbury River (from which Wiseman's Ferry takes its name).
   
   The first part of this book is Ms Grenville's personal quest for Wiseman through the records of the Society of Genealogists and the Public Records Office. Identifying the `right' late 18th century Solomon Wiseman is not easy and ultimately Ms Grenville supplements her search through the formal records with her own sense of Solomon Wiseman's presence at Three Cranes Wharf.
   
   Ms Grenville also seeks to obtain a sense of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Hawkesbury at the time they were dispossessed of their land by Wiseman. She does this through returning to the river, which she had first visited as a short-sighted child. Now, as an adult she is able to see and to sense the past more clearly. Some of Ms Grenville's most vivid writing is of the landscape, especially of the river itself. In many ways, it is this description of the landscape which joins the novel to this book more than the people and the history.
   
   In the second part of the book, Ms Grenville describes the process of creating her novel: describing the struggle involved in blending fact, fiction and physical description to bring the characters and the period to life.
   
   I enjoyed reading this book for the insights into the writing of `The Secret River'.
   
   Jennifer Cameron-Smith



2. Anybody who has read Kate Grenville's award winning The Secret River is bound to be curious about the parallels between Grenville's real ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, and the fictional William Thornhill, both convicts shipped off from London to Australia in the beginning of the nineteenth century. While starting out to write a biography of her great-great-great grandfather, what research did she embark on, what discoveries and mental processes led her in the end to move from a biography to a work of historical fiction? The author, honest, self-aware and self-critical, takes the reader on a fascinating journey into her mind, her feelings and analyses of people and places. Also, and of equal interest to those who have not (yet) read the novel, this "writer's memoir" is an enjoyable "how to" guide for any personal writing project. It contains a few "mantras about writing", such as "never start with a blank page", or "don't wait for time to write", etc. Grenville, who also teaches creative writing, walks the talk herself and the insights she shares with her readers make this a very personal and engaging story.
   
   I use the term "story" deliberately as it reads much more like a story of discovery and less as a writer's guide or even a "memoir". Her exquisite style and rich language that evoke landscapes and city-scapes in such vivid colours and detail that you feel you are walking along with her. Her research into the real great-great-great grandfather was not straight forward, of course, as records were scarce, family stories were not factual and there were numerous Solomon W. and dozens of Wisemans living in London around the same time in the same part of town... How she narrows down her search is also a guide for anybody interested in their own family genealogy - just fascinating. One aspect that helped her later on in her writing (and the reader of the novel will recognize them): she picked up small mementoes, stood on the spot where she imagined her ancestor had been standing. As soon as she made the connection, she can feel him, get under his skin. Only then does the character develop his own persona and as author she has to accept that she follows and he controls.
   
   Immense amount of research spanning several years resulted in filling one major gap in her knowledge or imagination after another. Recreating the language of working class people and fishermen as spoken in the late seventeen nineties was another challenge Grenville had to deal with: Solomon was not literate but later historical documents suggest that he learned to write, although in a stilted, ungrammatical sort of way. While the author made remarkable progress on the male side of her family, the female side, her great-great-great grandmother remained a mystery to her for the longest time. Few information snippets existed in the family archive and memory... so what to do? Her answer, after several false starts, is intriguing, and not only from the perspective of the novel's character development.
   
   The most difficult part of her search and research, however, was to imagine how the real Solomon Wiseman reacted to and interacted with the Aborigines when he and his young family first arrived in Australia. In investigating what might have happened, Grenville realized that she herself lacked much information and knowledge about the life of the aboriginal peoples of her country. Her learning path in this field is deeply moving as she gently and subtly explores what happened at the time of early confrontation and what could have been Wiseman's role in these encounters. For her own life it was another voyage of discovery.
   
   This "writing memoir" is such a beautifully and engagingly written book that it should be seen as an essential compendium for those who read THE SECRET RIVER. For others it is still a great read and probably a motivation to pick up the novel afterwards. [Friederike Knabe]



3. This is an interesting book about the research that goes into writing an historical novel. My intention in reading it was to beef up a book club presentation on The Secret River (which it did). Grenville writes about the stylistic choices she made in writing The Secret River. She also shares the truth about the characters one meets in the novel. As a stand alone story, the book feels a bit forced, but as a sequel to her novel it is very worth reading.