The Exiles

 I traveled for a few months in Australia in 1989 and I knew something about the history of transporting prisoners from England to Australia, but not nearly as much as I do now thanks to [a:Christina Baker Kline|157146|Christina Baker Kline|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1585081025p2/157146.jpg]'s [b:The Exiles|55276434|The Exiles|Christina Baker Kline|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618851080l/55276434.SX50.jpg|73236056]. It's a great example of how you can learn from historical fiction especially, in this case, if you read the supplement in the back of the edition I have. Such additional material is often dull, but this is as interesting as the novel as a whole.
 Do I have anything bad to say about it? No, but I do question the timing of the dispatching of a major character. Something about it left things hanging to me in a way I'm not literate enough to describe. I know that the unease that generates may be the point, but if it is I'm not smart enough to get that either.
 It reads fast. The text is generously leaded and the book is only about 82,000 words long. (By comparison, a [a:Herman Wouk|9020|Herman Wouk|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1266847920p2/9020.jpg] novel I'm reading, [b:Youngblood Hawke|42990|Youngblood Hawke|Herman Wouk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440384487l/42990.SY75.jpg|769149], is over 215,000 words long; [b:The Old Man and the Sea|2165|The Old Man and the Sea|Ernest Hemingway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1329189714l/2165.SY75.jpg|69741], 35,000 words long.)

 There were some things she would never get used to: the screams that spread like a contagion from one cell to the next. The vicious fistfights that broke out abruptly and ended with an inmate spitting blood or teeth. The lukewarm midday broth that floated with bony pig knuckles, snouts, bits of hooves and hair. Moldy bread laced with maggots. Once the initial shock subsided, though, Evangeline found it surprisingly easy to endure most of the degradations and indignities of her new life: the brutish guards, the cockroaches and other parasites, the unavoidable filth, rats scurrying across the straw. The constant contact with other women, cheek to cheek, their sour breath on her face as she tried to sleep, their snoring in her ears. She learned to dim the noise: the clanging door at the end of the hall, the tapping spoons and wailing babies. The stink of the chamber pot, which had so sickened her when she'd firs arrived, receded; she willed herself to ignore it.