Review: A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
Official Blurb:
This historical novel soars from the French Revolution to London and New York on an epic voyage to colonial Tasmania. With a cast of unforgettable characters, this is a tale of legacy, passion and reinvention. At its heart is a family with champagne in their blood and a fearless daughter determined to rewrite fate.
Van Diemen’s Land, 1839. A young woman of means arrives in Hobart, with a boy in her care. Leasing an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, Caroline Douglas must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists and invent a new life on this island of extreme seasons and wild beauty. But Caroline is carrying a secret of such magnitude, it has led her to cross the world. It will take all she is made of to bring it into the light.
My Review: A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose
In this family saga, Heather Rose blends fiction with the impacts of the French Revolution with 1800s England, adventure on the high seas, the convict colony of Van Dieman’s Land, and her own family history. With such a broad setting across France, England, and Australia, Rose’s scope of drama and social history provides a wonderful grouping of locations that are at once worlds apart and eerily similar in nature.
The narrative traces the family of Caroline Colbert from her grandparents in France during the revolution, her parents and aunt in London, and of course, her own life. From apprentice apothecary to winemaker, Caroline experienced heartache, loss, danger, and love as she traversed the globe re-inventing herself along the way.
It is difficult to approach A Great Act of Love without some trepidation. There are so many complex ethical decisions involved in writing about white family histories in this era, especially in dealing with an ancestor’s implication and participation in colonial violence. ~Fiona Wright: The Guardian (Fri 17 Oct 2025)
I quite enjoyed the story. Grief, brutality and violence are balanced with Caroline’s ability to love and to perform acts of love through friendship and the unbreakable bond between herself and her father. The twists and turns the author employed to keep the story moving along at an adventurous pace work well. There are parts of the story, I would have enjoyed delving deeper, but that’s the case, I find, with most good books. Not everything can be included. The hints at stories within stories (eg the abused and displaced Indigenous families and the treatment of convicts) remain worthwhile and tantalising for any reader wanting to learn more, and I highly recommend that you do.
Depth of character is created through flashbacks into each backstory: why things happened the way they did and why the characters responded in the manner they did are finely woven into the tapestry of the narrative. So many threads to pull together to make the whole so cleverly done.
I did extensive reading for this book… to try and put myself into the psyche of the time as much as anything and to understand what people knew at that time. Not to try and revisit my or visit my 21st century sensibilities onto it in any way, but to find out what was the intellectual landscape of the early 1800s. ~ Heather Rose: About the Authors TV (YouTube)
Watch and listen to Heather Rose talking about the creation of An Act of Great Love and the connection to her family.
About the author:
Heather’s ten books offer a breadth of literary endeavour moving through genres of literary fiction with ease … from bestselling fiction and deep dives into art and creativity, to magical realism, award-winning crime fiction, children’s fantasy, memoir and now …historical fiction. They have won numerous prizes including the Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize, the Margaret Scott Prize and the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. Her work has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. She is also one half of the children’s author Angelica Banks. All Heather’s novels are published in Australia by Allen & Unwin. Heather lives in Tasmania.
Heather’s new novel – A Great Act of Love – is published in Australia by Allen & Unwin (2025) and by John Murray in the UK and Summit/ Simon & Schuster (2026).
Thanks for reading My Review: A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose. Check out more of my book reviews here.
Comments