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The Secret River explores human instinct on a level that is visceral, honest... and depressing.

Or perhaps it is just Western instinct, rather than human instinct--and that is even more depressing.

The novel tracks a family of Brits at the turn of the 19th century as the family is deported to Australia for crimes committed by William Thornhill, husband and father, and as it engages the challenges of the wilderness. At its core, The Secret River is the story of the family's interactions with the aborigines--interactions both peaceful and confrontational--and the conflict between, on one side, the family's desire to establish a settlement of their own and on the other side, the relationship already shared between the aborigines and the land.

The theme that guides this conflict is how different people provide for themselves and for their families, and the novel gradually reveals two central models for doing so. The first is the growing fetish for materialism, isolation, and ownership among most of the British settlers. And the second is the communal, minimalist existence of the Aborigines.

Naturally, the efficient and simple existence of the "blacks"--as they are often called in the novel--reveals the moral turpitude of the settlers. We (of European descent) are embarrassed by the (male) settlers who show little ability to reason, empathize, cooperate, and/or communicate. Most of the British characters are dumb or ineffective; they victimize others and act selfishly and violently. Their actions are formulaic and predictable, right up to the end.

But here's the rub.

At every step there's a sense that their brute actions are inevitable and that the result--if we search our baser instincts, however "morally" repulsive and inhumane the means may be--is desirable. The driving away of the aborigines for the sake of establishing a safe homestead feels like the inexorable march of the West. It feels safe. It feels alpha.

The novel reveals the inherent ugliness of this instinct.

I was frustrated by the idiotic behavior of many characters' actions, and then I felt resigned to the inevitability of the past two centuries of history. It's a sad, sad tale of Western expansion and waste. And the romance between William and Sal, his wife, unfortunately does little to assuage the ill feelings. It felt cold, rather than heroic.

Yet, there's something real in this book; it taps into a visceral and unspoken impulse, something too ugly and complicated to address casually. That makes The Secret River valuable, even if it is not always pleasurable.

Do I recommend it? Sure. Loosely. It's interesting cultural history.
Would I teach it? Mmm... As a summer reading selection, but not chapter by chapter.
Lasting impression: Transparent, brutal men; clever women; inevitable march of the West; failure of humanity.