Page - 234 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 Indeed, conversation is key to understanding vernacular criticism.As Long explains: [P]articipants in book groups create a conversation that begins with the book each womanhas readbutmovesbeyond thebook to include thepersonal connectionsand meanings each has found in the book, and the new connectionswith the book, with innerexperience,andwiththeperspectivesof theotherparticipantsthatemergewithin the discussion… It is as if the discussion is a lens that reveals the books under dis- cussion and the inner lives of coparticipants and, through this process, allowspartic- ipants to reflectbackontheirowninterior livesaswell. In theseconversations,people canusebooksandeachother’s responses tobooks topromote insightandempathy in an integrative process of collective self-reflection. In that sense, reading group dis- cussions perform creative cultural work, for they enable participants to articulate or evendiscoverwho theyare: their values, their aspirations, and their stance toward the dilemmasof theirworlds.8 Inpresenting theseoutlinesof vernacularcriticism,weareconsciousof therisk ofdrawing toogross acontrastwithacademic criticism.Vernacular criticism is not being positioned here as academic criticism’s ‘other’. Moreover, we are consciousofourowncriticalpredilectionsandcarefulnot toprojectourbiases shapedastheyarebypost-structuralism, feminism,andpostcolonialism.Wedo notwish tovalorize readinggroups as the idealized sitesof ‘hospitable’, ‘repar- ative’, ‘implicated’,or ‘transgressive’readingpractices;ofahermeneuticsof trust ratherthanofsuspicion.Butwedowanttoconsiderhowbookclubconversations allude to anumber of important concepts that are of significance to academic literary critics.Bywayof example,wenowturn toourworkonthe receptionof KateGrenville’snovelSarahThornhill. Sarah Thornhill (2011) is the sequel to Kate Grenville’s controversial 2005 historical novel, The Secret River. In this third novel in Grenville’s “colonial trilogy,” the eponymous Sarah Thornhill is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, the complex central protagonist of The SecretRiver: abook that be- camethefocusofconsiderabledebateaboutthewritingofhistoryandofreaders’ capacity to differentiate history and fiction. The sequel is a different kind of novel,writtenintheaftermathofwhatwasanacrimoniouspublicdebate.Atfirst glance a colonial interracial romance story, the novel is also concerned with Sarah’sgrowingrealizationofher father’sculpability inamassacreof theDarug people, of which Sarah is an unwitting beneficiary, and Sarah’s need tomake peace with her brothers’Maori relatives for the death of her niece. While Grenvilleestablishesaconventionalnarrativeframe(inthiscase,tragichistorical romance), she soondeparts fromthis to exploremore contemporary concerns, includingwhiteAustralianguilt and thecapacityofnon-Indigenous subjects to 8 Long2003, pp. 144–45. MaggieNolan/RobertClarke /RebekahBrown234 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0