Shirley HazzardReseñas

The writing in this book is impeccable -- precise, evocative, at times witty. But overall, the book is dull.

Read in Naples. Lovely and exquisite, and full of feeling for this crazily vibrant city. Gorgeous prose.

Weirdly good. Beautiful, off kilter writing. Strange segues, but a long fascinating tale which perfectly describes the twists and turns and come rounds of life. A pretty amazing book.

Hazzard begins Ancient Shore with an abbreviated autobiography of her childhood and how she discovered Italy. From there, different essays connect Naples to its culture, politics, history, and endless charm. Hazzard remembers Naples of the 1950s so there is a nostalgic air to her writing. Because Ancient Shore is a little dated, I wondered if some of the details are still accurate. I guess I will have to travel there to find out!
Hazzard's husband, Francis Steegmuller, steps in for a story about a violent mugging he experienced. His tale is terrible. Terrible because he was warned many times over not to carry his bag a certain way. Terrible because the violence caused great ever-lasting injury. Terrible, above all, because he knew better. This was not his first time in Naples.

I have read Hazzard’s Great Fire and, sadly, do not share Liam’s enthusiasm. First and foremost, I did not think that either Aldred Leith or Helen Driscoll, the two major characters, was particularly well-drawn or fleshed out. I found the story more about the relationship than about two individuals. In addition, I was surprised that I didn’t find either one of them particularly sympathetic, certainly not as much as, for example, as Peter Exley, a major character whom Hazzard essentially drops entirely when his story seems to get in her way. Her sudden and virtually total dispensation with this character I found inexplicable. Just as startling is her dropping of Ben, another central character for at least the first half of the novel. Not only is he essentially dropped, he is disposed of late in the book in a matter of a few quick sentences.
Hazzard spends little time drawing minor characters. Thus, Helen's parents barely register; they occupy one very early scene and then become stick figures, as are virtually all of the minor characters, with a couple noteworthy exceptions. Minor characters can be minor and yet well-drawn, with depth, fullness, and even a modicum of complexity. That simply wasn’t the case with Great Fire.
I thought the last chapters on Leith in England and Helen in NZ were overlong and added little to either the characters or the plot or even to Hazzard’s theme(s). I am also baffled that Hazzard reintroduces a very minor character (Raimonda Mancini) for all of a paragraph. Moreover, the introduction of so many new characters toward the end—Aurora Searle and an entire cast of people in NZ—felt like padding: it was beside the point, unnecessary to the plot or the theme(s), and ultimately more distracting than anything else. These chapters added virtually nothing to the picture we already had of Leith and Helen.
I also found most of the characters to be so self-involved that I honestly had trouble accepting them as real or as sympathetic. Yes, we are all self-involved to a degree. But not so deeply and constantly as the characters here are. Helen also seemed to me to be far too “wise” for her age. Few 18-year-old women talk or think as she does. Hell, few 28-year-olds, for that matter. Why does it bother me? Because, in the end, I found it very challenging to consider her a believable character.
The “tone” of so many conversations also seemed off: most people’s conversations do not wax philosophic all the time. Sometimes, sure. But virtually all the time? Angst, world-weariness, metaphysical speculation are constants here. Moreover, everyone speaks in the same voice: well-spoken, “literate” and not much like “real” people—or maybe I should say not the people I know. (Maybe that should be a lesson to me.) There is virtually no distinguishing one character from another: they all have the same tone, the same literate vocabulary, regardless of background, interests, or position.
All this said, I still think Hazzard tells a (mostly) interesting story and her themes are worthwhile and (mostly) well set out. She is a good writer—though I for one found her stylistic tics (sentences without subjects, sentence fragments) offputting. Having poked around a bit, I recognize that this book is highly regarded, so take my criticisms with a grain (or more) of salt. No doubt others (maybe most) will disagree. But that's my take.½

In a vague but overwhelming postwar depression studded with images of physical acedia, injury, and disease the characters haltingly seek to escape (to the past or the future?) via very romantic love. This won the National Book Award, and was nominated for my own Stage IV Oy Vey Award, but was too well-written to make the shortlist.
The author writes in sentences that sometimes seem to have holes in them. I first thought that this was some kind of synecdoche, but it isn’t. Her writing is abstract, oblique, and peppered with poetic or odd word choices; adjectives as nouns, etc. She also likes to occasionally give her punctuation a strenuous work-out:

By now, misery would have circulated: the dead would be named, the relatives informed; existences derailed.

Near the book's slowly approaching ending, a character comments,

"What a cruel story. Does everyone have a cruel story?”.

They certainly do here, although it sometimes seems as though they both exaggerate and cherish it. I sometimes felt like the family practitioner who dealt with various mental disorders by slapping his patients and saying, Get a hold of yourself, man!

I was completely enthralled by these stories about failed relationships in Cliffs of Fall, Shirley Hazzard’s 1963 debut.

Mismatched couples, relationships gone sour, partners talking dismissively to each other. Hazzard shows by constantly alternating their perspectives how her characters think they know how others regard them, yet they are completely wrong.

Combined with Shirley Hazzard’s beautiful writing style which is somewhat brighter and feels a bit less weighted down with symbolism than her later novels, every single story in this collection was a joy to read.

The eight stories in this 1967 short story collection reflect Hazzard’s own experiences of the time she worked for the United Nations in New York City and they give us an insight into how an organization can become so big that maintaining its ineffectual and often ludicrous organizational machinery becomes almost a goal in its own right while crushing many peoples’ aspirations working for it.

Sharp, poignant, and recognizable when you have worked in a large organization yourself. And also written with a lot of wit which made this into a delightful read.

This author makes me a better reader.½

Utterly perfect.

There is a secret in Bay of Noon. My eyes did a double read when the words "I am in love with my brother" floated past my face. Did narrator Jenny mean what I think she meant? Is that the secret every reviewer alludes to when writing about Bay of Noon? Hazzard drops hints like pebbles disturbing tranquil waters.
In addition to being a story about a woman fleeing a dark secret, Bay of Noon is about the power of friendship. In the end, the reader is left with this question: do years of disconnection matter if the bonds of relationship are stronger than any prolonged length of time?
Confessional: None of the characters were likeable to me and maybe that was the point. I really did not care for Justin. His refusal of plain speak was annoying. Circumventing addressing matters of the heart the way he did would make me walk away.
Bay of Noon has been called a romance novel and I guess in some ways it is, but I didn't like any of the couples and I never really felt any of them were actually in love.

Set in war torn Asia and Europe, Hazzard's final novel (20 years in the writing) follow's the life of Aldred Leith, as he arrives in Japan just after the war ends. Tacking forward and back, telling his story and those of the people he meets, most of whom are in some way in transition from who they were during war, and who they might become.

I'd say anyone who liked The English Patient or The Balkan Trilogy will like this one.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2004.½

The novel revolves mostly around the life of Caro (Caroline), one of three sisters, who along with husbands and lovers people this dense novel of inner lives.

Recently I was thinking about what makes a literary novel, and suspect it varies a bit for all of us. For me it very much is about use of language and good writing, often exploring place and the inner world of it's characters at least as much as their engagement with what is going on around them. And tone.

It took a little time to get into her writing as in many ways it is denser than writing we have become more used too, and occasionally a sentence needs interrogation. If not quite an original, Hazzard is certainly a writers writer.

I read this novel for the first time in 2009, along with Hazzard's other novels, and recalling nothing about the specifics, but remembered the tone. Quite common for me. Back then I gave it 4*s, and have elevated it to 5*s this time.

I chose to reread this novel now, as I am about to start [Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life] (Briggita Olubas).

Highly recommended for those who enjoy literary novels and good writing

it's a brilliant novel, one that will need re-reading.

The Great Fire is a novel set in the aftermath of World War II. Aldred Leith is a thirty-two year old British officer, who is writing a book about the destruction in China and Japan and initial rebuilding efforts. Severely wounded in the European fighting, Leith has recovered sufficiently to spend months traipsing across China and is now entering Japan. There he takes quarters on the grounds of the Driscoll compound and soon befriends the young Driscoll's, Ben and Helen. Intelligent and innocent, the adolescents represent both the culture of the past and the hope for the future.

Despite having been written in 2003, the novel feels like a novel of an earlier time. Frocks, gentlemen callers, and afternoons spent reading poetry make much of the action seem disembodied from the setting. Although the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are alluded to, they are never discussed. The Japanese are servants only, and there is little interaction with them, despite Leith speaking the language. Most of the action centers around the love affair between Leith and Helen, made scandalous by the fifteen year age difference. There was great potential for a book set in this time and place, but the author focuses on the domesticity of a European love story instead.

"Transit of Venus" is a book about the passion of love -- young love, middle-aged love, shared love, unrequited love, carnal love, disappointed love, disillusioned love, fulfilled love. It has been praised as multi-layered and mysterious.

The language is baroque and upper-class English, more flavored by the 19thc, not really in keeping with the the time period of the 1950s-70s -- though one would be hard put to distinguish one decade from another.

In describing the megaliths at Avebury:
"The little charchyard slabs -- child-height, companionable -- among which Caro and Paul had once sauntered became, by contrast with these huge and mighty forms, epemeral leaflets promulgating a forgotten cause. Compared with this scene, all the rest of Creation appeared a flutter of petals and pebbles, a levity in which the most massive tree was insubstantial. The sweet village itself, through which the farthest monoliths were posted, suggested, with its few thatched and slated centuries, a frail masking of reality. Not that the dark boulders supplied, by their outlasting, any triumphant sense of durability in man's intentions. There could be no winning or even mattering here. You have to pit some larger reason than mere living against these rocks: it was your mortality, your very capacity to receive the wound, against their indifference."

Honestly, I found it all rather tedious and somewhat laughable. By the end of the novel, I really didn't care much about any of the characters. Maybe I'm just too old or have read too many much better novels.½

Bland story. Beautiful descriptions but the story didn't really open up for me.

"The Transit of Venus" is an elegant, verbally glittering exploration of the power of love -- or is it the love of power? "Love" in the novel takes possession of characters, in some cases dominating their lives for decades, and in others fleeting quickly away. The structure of the novel moves back and forth from one character (or set of characters) to another, illuminating and deepening each individual as it progresses. If it sounds like a complex novel it is, and the language in which it is expressed is as precise as it is poetic. Not an easy read, but a great book.

A beautifully written book of two orphaned Australian sisters, Grace and Caro, whose lives experience profound changes through the people they meet, and/or fall in love with. Grace, the more lovelier and socially astute of the two sisters, settles into marriage and family life. With such cosy domesticity, she still finds herself being catapulted into the burgeonings of a least-expected affair. Caro, with her self-posession and aura of taciturn mystery, has an unsettling effect on those who she meets. Ted Tice, an astronomer, is utterly besotted with her, but she chooses to be with Paul Ivory, who signals the start of her eventful life and relationships.

This is my first time reading Hazzard, who is a thrill to read. Poetic, intellectual and also psychologically inclined, though not in a way that is immediately apparent to the reader. This book is very strange - the more she pulls out her surgical knife, the more puzzling and mythical her characters become. It's like reaching out to grasp only air. But even this sentence cannot explain the strange feeling of being both obliterated and yet being kept as a distance from her work. I am both intrigued and puzzled by her writing. This book cannot be completed on the first read. Maybe there will be more, on the second dive...

On aurait pu nommer ce livre "sous les cendres"... Une ambiance, une époque, cicatrisante mais encore douloureuse.½

I was not impressed - Bored Stiff

My favorite stories were the ones about The Organization (The United Nations). Some stories seemed so vague... I did enjoy it overall if not a bit on the dry side.

It took me a while to get into this book. The actual plot is not that exciting but the characters are interesting and the setting is quite remarkable, casting a light on WWII veterans living in China and Japan to write reports, their coping with getting back to some kind of normal.

It can be hard to have a good book group discussion when everyone agrees that the book is terrific, multi-layered, superbly written, and subtly subversive of the reading experience. All true. Two orphan girls and their older half-sister migrate from Australia to England after WWII. The two orphan girls experience different traversals of their own social and love lives. So far, it sounds pretty average. But the novel is full of the effects of change, moral choices, attempts to define personal freedom, illusions of integrity, impact of war, and fascinating character studies, especially of the women in the book. By all means read this book - preferably twice!

Ugh! This was tedious and a bit painful. Aldred Leith and Helen Driscoll are blah characters. There was nothing truly interesting about either of them as presented. You would certainly expect something to grab you about Aldred given his war experiences and subsequent travels in Asia. There is no romance in Aldred and Helen's romance. I wanted to yell at Aldred to either pursue his love or to withdraw. To Helen, I wanted to say love is not supposed to be this depressing. The subplot involving Peter's illness seems to promise more insight, but Aldred appears to withdraw from his friend's challenge to make sense of life. The Great Fire, at least in how the title refers to Hiroshima, is almost non-existent.

I recognize that this novel may have a treasure that I have left undiscovered. But I tried, and found little that I could embrace.