Oh so good

I read it... It was boring. The history you can glean from it on London and starting Australia is interesting enough. If you approach it as a way to get a glimpse of history through a story, it's not so bad. Just be sure that care more for the history, and slice of life, than the story.

That's not to say there is not a story. There is, told in multiple facets, and joined in feasible, and reliable ways. I just never could get to the point that I cared about any of the characters.

There is a time in the life of an avid reader when one discovers an author that moves them. Bryce Courtenay is one such author for me and I have long enjoyed his books. After moving to Australia many years ago, Courtenay decided to write a ‘thank you’ story for his new country, wanting to pull on all its nuances. He did so in three volumes, the first of which is this book. Filled with wonderful 19th century history of the types of people who made their way to the shores of Australia, then a penal colony, Courtenay provides the reader with a sensational novel about Ikey Solomon and Mary Klerk, two completely different people whose lives in England are shaped such that they need a new start. What follows is an epic tale about their choices and the future they build for themselves, with literally nothing in their pockets. Bryce Courtenay’s best with more to come.

Ikey Solomon has made quite the name for himself in London as a highly successful thief and counterfeiter. His business dealings leave many in awe and with empty pockets, though Ikey is keen to stay one step ahead of the law whenever he can. His wife, Hannah, tries to keep track of him, especially with a growing family, but is unable to do so. However, in all his dealings, Ikey has discovered the art of upsetting others in the realm of criminal activity, which earns him a reputation. When one such thief decides to strike against Ikey, the plan sees the great thief in front of a judge and there is no way out. Could Ikey Solomon have finally met his match?

Mary Klerk has her own life journey to discover. A smart woman who has a passion for knowledge, Mary soon discovers that while her father taught her well, it is not much appreciated in the working world. Mary tries to score a position as a clerk in a number of businesses, but is strong armed by the men who vie for the positions as well, taking Mary and her unique means of calculating sums—an abacus—as their largest threat. They abuse her, leaving Mary gnarled and broken, forced to work menial jobs, though she also meets the famed Ikey Solomon during this time. While Mary and Ikey grow closer, there are some who dislike this team, primarily Hannah, and seek to tear them down. When she is brought before a judge for a long-ago indiscretion, Mary is sentenced to an Australian penal colony and shipped abroad.

As both Ikey and Mary find themselves headed to Van Diemens Land, a penal colony in Tasmania, they try to make the most of their new adventures. Mary connects with those aboard her ship and makes a strong name for herself in the world of medicine and business. Ikey, in his own way, continues to try working the angles to ensure that he will not be left behind, even in a new land. When Mary decides to take up a new craft, that of brewing, she learns the ins and outs of the business in a country that is still rife with entrepreneurial spirit. She creates The Potato Factory, in hopes of starting fresh and ensuring that she can make something of herself. However, Hannah has other ideas and remembers a hidden fortune Ikey spoke of back in England. Hannah begins plotting her own revenge, in hopes of ensuring that Ikey and anyone in his sphere fails horribly. All the while, Ikey comes upon two boys from the most unusual circumstance, adopting them with Mary and watching them grow. Tommo and Hawk accept the Solomon name, but this is only the start to their adventures.

Whenever I read a book by Bryce Courtenay, I am pulled into the middle of an epic story that captivates my attention. I cannot get enough of the setting, the characters, or the many plot twists that Courtenay injects into the piece, all of which prove highly entertaining. The foundation for this novel is the time spent from the streets of London to the arrival on Tasmania, as well as the journey the protagonists make to get there. As usual, Bryce Courtenay offers stellar guidance through his slick narrative, leading the reader on adventures while history emerges at the most opportune moments. Strong characters emerge and provide the reader with something stellar, especially Mary Abacus (Klerk) and Ikey Solomon. They are two pillars in this story and will prove to be essential as the series progresses. As with most Bryce Courtenay books, the types of characters are plentiful, enriching both the story and the humorous aspects of the narrative in equal measure. Plot twists are what keeps the momentum in this piece, which is how Courtenay keeps the reader’s attention. He provides wonderful direction before things fork at different occasions, only to surprise the reader repeatedly. I can only hope that the rest of the series will be as stunning as this opening novel. Long chapters and detailed descriptions provide a smorgasbord for the reader, allowing them to feast on true greatness!

Kudos, Mr. Courtenay, for delivering another winner. The world lost a great writer when you passed.

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A real page-turner, I couldn't put it down!

2016 vreading challenge: a historical fiction novel.

In many ways, The Potato Factory could be described as a manifesto of the underdog wrapped in a scathing indictment of early 19th British culture: it features many characters from traditionally downtrodden classes who succeed through hard work, wits, and pure gumption despite the verdict of “society” that they were born to be trash, are inherently trash, will always be trash, and shouldn't even bother to dream of a better life because they are trash and trash doesn't deserve to be anywhere but the dump. Nearly everyone featured in the story is born to that most downtrodden of classes: the poor. In his foreword, Courtenay describes this novel as his personal thank you note to his adopted home country of Australia, and in many ways you could say the story of the underdog is the very manifesto of Australia itself – the will to show the world that a bunch of people “society” cast off as trash and scum can make it through hard work, wit and pure gumption, and they don't need silly things like “good breeding” or boarding school manners to win at life. You might even say that the idea that people should be judged by their words and deeds, and not by their birth, class, upbringing or money is an essential part of the Australian character. (Of course, it took them a while to apply that sort of thinking to the aborigines... I think Courtenay is engaging in pure bombast when he boasts several times in the foreword that Australia is “the most egalitarian country in the world.” Suuuuure it is... if you're white and male.)

Underdog #1: Our spunky heroine, Mary Abacus, is a woman who spends a significant part of her early life whoring, and later running a whorehouse, simply because whoring is about the only job open to a woman when she can't get a reference as a servant, and no one will hire a woman as a clerk. She faces first-hand the hypocrisy of a society that says the decent jobs should go to the men because a woman can always make a living on her back, and then scorns her for being a whore when she took the only path left to her. Although a significant chunk of the story is about Ikey Solomon, Mary is the clear lodestone and the character you can genuinely like and root for. Despite her rough upbringing and even rougher treatment as a young career woman on the streets of London, and the many brutal hardships she faces, she retains her inherent sense of fairness, compassion, and decency. That's not to say she's a pushover or an angel – she's sharp as a tack and as cutthroat as she needs to be to survive. But she's also smart and has a head for business, and she knows that a bit of human decency and tough-but-fair treatment costs very little and repays itself in spades in respect and loyalty earned.

Underdog #2: Our hero (or perhaps anti-hero), Ikey Solomon, is a notorious fence, con artist, forger, and criminal jack of all trades. He's a disgusting wretch and is almost as hard to truly like as Mary is hard to dislike. But his loquacious patter lulls one into almost-liking him, if for no other reason than that he's entertaining. And as criminals go, he could be worse. He's not a cruel or brutal man, primarily because he's too cowardly and physically wimpy to ever intimidate anyone. So he operates on slinking flattery and guile instead, but is an earnest believer in the principle of “always leave a little salt on the bread.” In other words, don't take so much that the people you deal with can't make their own livings. He and his odious wife Hannah richly deserve one another, but the story is written in a way that will ensure you dislike Ikey less than you dislike Hannah. She and Ikey are two of a kind, but for some reason she comes off much the worse as one of the clear villains. Perhaps it was that bit where she and her son David cut the finger off a small child to try to extort money from Ikey, but let's face it, we hated her long before that, even though in every other way, she's virtually indistinguishable from Ikey.

A lot of reviewers have described the character of Ikey Solomon as a recognizable lift of Dickens’ famous character Fagan of Oliver Twist. However, considering Ikey isn’t fictional but was a real person, I suspect the reverse is true – that the real Ikey Solomon inspired the fictional character of Fagan. (Bit of trivia: Dickens himself makes a cameo when he interviews Sparrow Fart for a newspaper article about Ikey.)

Underdog #3: The story is peopled with a motley supporting cast of whores, thugs, pickpockets, con artists, assorted convicts, and drunks, who are as often as not proven to be good of heart in their own way and simply trying to make their way in a hard world that has made them hard. They prove themselves capable of small, and sometimes large, acts of friendship and loyalty. They, as much as the main players, prove the story's point that people, on some level, deserve better than to be wholly judged by their class or wealth or even criminal lifestyle.

Villainy: In contrast, the empowered classes of the story repeatedly prove themselves to be generally (with a few notable exceptions) far worse people than the “scum” they despise on principle. They are ruled by bigotry, hypocrisy, smirking dishonesty, insatiable greed, and most notably, a depth of not only apathy, but open revilement, toward anyone they deem “beneath” them that is almost unfathomable by today's standards. It's unclear whether they are truly any worse than those of the lower classes, but they have the power to inflict far more misery on others, and they exercise it freely. No wonder these people were able to view the entire native population of Australia as mere vermin to be exterminated – they thought little better of the poorer classes of London. If they had been around during Hitler's time, they would have lauded him. Most of the story's graphic atrocities (and there are some doozies) are perpetrated by these sorts of people.

Oh, did you want to know about the plot?? I'll just say it's a rollicking (and often harrowing) adventure that involves lots of unsavory people in low places and Bad Things happening to our heroes. I never found it slow, and while it wasn't quite “couldn't put it down” riveting, the pages kept turning for me.

Minor Gripes
Much of the broad outlines of the story are based on real historical people and events, and as a result, Courtenay’s narrative style wavers between telling an up-close, personal, and immediate story based on the characters’ own experiences and perceptions, and pulling back to a broader, bird’s-eye historian’s perspective in which he continuously violates the novelist’s “show; don’t tell” rule. This is particularly true toward the beginning, in which he spends long passages explaining our characters’ personalities and motivations to us instead of simply showing them to us through their words and actions.

Some of Courtenay's portrayals of inter-racial relationships seemed off. Unfortunately, not the horrible stuff – to my sorrow, that’s all too believable.  What I had a problem with is the idea that Mary, even as good and compassionate a person as we know she is, could really be as open-minded as portrayed, given the culture of the time.

This book has the quality of a folk legend re-imagined. The characters loom larger than life and protagonists endure years of the worst kinds of suffering before triumphing over their oppressors. The first half of this novel, set in nineteenth century London, is slowly-paced, but packed with eccentric, Dickensian characters, complete with dialect. The very eventful second half takes place mostly in Australia during its penal colony days, as the feud that boils for over 700 pages comes to a head. The ambitious scope of the story is realized with solidly-crafted prose and compelling characters. Though some of these characters come uncomfortably close to stereotypes, the feeling that the story was being shared with me by an eccentric uncle made this feel okay somehow.

** donated to CCU 30/10/2014

review finally!.

Ikey Solomon and his partner in crime, Mary Abacus, make the harsh journey from thriving nineteenth-century London to the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land.

In the backstreets and dives of Hobart Town, Mary builds The Potato Factory - a brewery, where she plans a new future. But her ambitions are threatened by Ikey's wife, Hannah, her old enemy. As each woman sets out to destroy the other, the families are brought to the edge of disaster.

The characters Ikey, Mary and Hannah (Ikey's wife) were documented real people & some of the other characters in Tasmania are based on real historical people. Although Ikey's character is partially based on Fagin ( from Dicken's Oliver Twist) it's interesting just how much Courtenay has borrowed of Dicken's Twist to flesh out Ikey's London years particularly with his apprentice thieves. This is the first Courtneay book I've read. It's faced paced generally and keeps you hooked though a few chapters here and there dragged -although interesting & possibly historically close to actual reality of the early whalers, the point was long in coming eg. the chapter about Blue Whale Sally.

Here and there I was annoyed at some of Courtenay's descriptions of our particular Australian things such as daub and wattle huts. They felt like they were lifted out of the wikipedia, awkward and jarring compared to the dialogue. This may be because Courtneay is not Australian, Or ? felt the international reader needed that type of stilted information. Normally when I come across a term or phrase I am not familiar with in a book I look it up myself...I don't need the author to give an encyclopedic explanation midstream -that only works if two characters are speaking or there is a constant omnipresent narrator which I don't feel is present here. ( a glossary at the end - is more acceptable).

My other complaint is while Ikey is mostly billed as the main character, when he dies 3/4 way through, it's announced in a letter and the reader is wondering how and while there are two books in this series following this one, it seems odd he is so suddenly out of the picture. The real heroine of the book is Mary in my opinion, and it is she who achieves some greatness & transformation in the course of the story. I felt for her from the beginning, while Ikey was a little harder to understand, though I came to love him too with his penchant for liking many pockets in his coats.

Those who have no knowledge of convict times in Australia will find the conditions & punishments harsh. While I've read accounts before of conditions on the transport ships and of the lashings, beatings and meagre food rations and the inhumanity of The Female Factory orphans, it still shocks me. Makes you wonder sometimes how our Aussie psyche evolved into a "she'll be right mate" attitude.

There are several good quotes in the book, two I listed below - if I have time will find the others.

(wireless router problems...review later

Score! 50c today op shop find.

There was an Australian mini series made of this book with Lisa McClune which I missed probably for the better since many down under mini series end up seeming the same, particular period ones.

"When the poor embrace the tenants of morality it comes ready-made with misery as it's constant companion".

..."it is not the nature of things to remain calm. Contentment is always a summer to be counted in brief snatches of sunlight while unhappiness is an endless winter season of dark and stormy weather".

loaned to pop

Brilliant, well-researched historical fiction.

I loved this because of the stories. It is not a plot-driven book. Read it for the enjoyment of the times, but know that those times we're not politically or humanly correct and there are prejudices and slurs expressed by several characters. The only one that seems to be updated is about our main character, Mary Abacus, who encounters gender prejudice but overcomes it.
I listened to this on Audible and enjoyed the voice of Humphrey Bower. Great talent and variety! My only negative is the way it was strung together on Audible. It was hard to navigate. The "chapters" are all at least an hour long, and have no correlation to actual chapters.

A much more brutal and graphic Oliver Twist meets Les Miserables, at least in the first half. Mostly because of it's early 19th century London setting and the lower-class population the book centers upon. The story expands from there.

This is the second of Mr. Courtenay's books I have read. At several points I was going to throw in the towel on this book as I was not enjoying much of it due to the graphic descriptions of brutality in the character's lives. But I find Mr. Courtenay to be a very good author and story teller had hooked me to the point I was compelled to finish the book.

There was a significant question unanswered which was disappointing. But in checking just after finishing the book I found that this is book one of a trilogy so that makes sense.

Four stars for a seemingly mixed review? I decided not to ding the author because I did not like the detailed violence. It probably promotes more empathy for the characters, but still not enjoyable.

It just wasn't my cup of tea...

What a book. What a long book. It’s about 7 books in one. Beautifully written but terribly confronting. Many parts were hard to read and even harder to imagine it was reality not too long ago. I loved the link to Tasmanian history and loved even more the defiance of gender norms Mary champions. I’ve also never had a more love/hate relationship with a main character before than I did with Ikey. Can’t wait to read the next one.