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tasmanian_bibliophile's review
3.0
‘Lydia imagined her parents in heaven, twin figureheads, their carved expressions gazing confidently seaward.’
I picked this novel up, read the blurb, and decided to read it. I almost stopped, a few pages in, when the character I recognise from history as Lady Jane Franklin was renamed as Lady Jane Frankland. Why, I wondered, did Ms Simpson fictionalise Lady Jane? I kept reading, and while the novel held my interest until the end, the transparent fictionalisation irritated me even though I think I now understand why Ms Simpson did it.
In this novel, Lydia Frankland, Lady Jane’s stepdaughter is retracing aspects of Lady Jane’s life. On the death of Lady Jane, Lydia travels (back) to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) to try to uncover the truth of Lady Jane’s life. Lydia had accompanied her father, Sir John Frankland, and Lady Jane, when he served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Her journey back to Van Diemen’s Land stirs some memories of her own. Did Lady Jane have an affair with Louis Lempriere? What kind of man was her father? And her memory, on her initial voyage, of a young convict lad: what happened to him?
This is a multi-layered novel, drawing from a range of sources including the diaries of Lady Jane and Lempriere, and the papers of a convict boy executed for murder. Lydia questions much of what she thought she knew of her kind and loving father: how could he have overseen such brutality in the convict system, and supported such tyrannical behaviour by those in charge of it? And into this world, with its class rigidity and proper order, steps Charles Darwin with his theory of natural selection. Only the fittest survive, it seems, both in the natural world and in the penal colony.
The fictional Lady Jane has much in common with the real Lady Jane Franklin, but aspects of the fictional Lady Jane are imagined. Informed imagination, perhaps, and it provided Ms Simpson with more opportunity to explore possibilities without the constraint of needing to prove facts. I wish I’d known, before I read the novel, that Ms Simpson had originally intended a factual book rather than a fictional one. If I’d known, I might have been less irritated initially by what I saw as transparent fictionalisation of a couple of the major characters.
I’d recommend this novel to those interested in Tasmania’s past as a colonial penal colony, its natural history and the life and times of Lady Jane Franklin. A fascinating and energetic woman, but not without flaw. And yes, Charles Darwin (aboard the Beagle) sailed into Hobart Town on the 5th of February 1836. He sailed out again on the 17th of February.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
I picked this novel up, read the blurb, and decided to read it. I almost stopped, a few pages in, when the character I recognise from history as Lady Jane Franklin was renamed as Lady Jane Frankland. Why, I wondered, did Ms Simpson fictionalise Lady Jane? I kept reading, and while the novel held my interest until the end, the transparent fictionalisation irritated me even though I think I now understand why Ms Simpson did it.
In this novel, Lydia Frankland, Lady Jane’s stepdaughter is retracing aspects of Lady Jane’s life. On the death of Lady Jane, Lydia travels (back) to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) to try to uncover the truth of Lady Jane’s life. Lydia had accompanied her father, Sir John Frankland, and Lady Jane, when he served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Her journey back to Van Diemen’s Land stirs some memories of her own. Did Lady Jane have an affair with Louis Lempriere? What kind of man was her father? And her memory, on her initial voyage, of a young convict lad: what happened to him?
This is a multi-layered novel, drawing from a range of sources including the diaries of Lady Jane and Lempriere, and the papers of a convict boy executed for murder. Lydia questions much of what she thought she knew of her kind and loving father: how could he have overseen such brutality in the convict system, and supported such tyrannical behaviour by those in charge of it? And into this world, with its class rigidity and proper order, steps Charles Darwin with his theory of natural selection. Only the fittest survive, it seems, both in the natural world and in the penal colony.
The fictional Lady Jane has much in common with the real Lady Jane Franklin, but aspects of the fictional Lady Jane are imagined. Informed imagination, perhaps, and it provided Ms Simpson with more opportunity to explore possibilities without the constraint of needing to prove facts. I wish I’d known, before I read the novel, that Ms Simpson had originally intended a factual book rather than a fictional one. If I’d known, I might have been less irritated initially by what I saw as transparent fictionalisation of a couple of the major characters.
I’d recommend this novel to those interested in Tasmania’s past as a colonial penal colony, its natural history and the life and times of Lady Jane Franklin. A fascinating and energetic woman, but not without flaw. And yes, Charles Darwin (aboard the Beagle) sailed into Hobart Town on the 5th of February 1836. He sailed out again on the 17th of February.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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