Often when I open up the Goodreads app, I am greeted by a quote from Tracy Chevalier that states, ‘I have consistently loved books that I’ve read when I’ve been sick in bed.’ This always brings to mind the time I read ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ several years ago, lying on a couch, wrapped in blankets, sipping on Lucozade. Ironically, I didn't actually ‘love’ the book, but it does vividly remind me of that sickly state.

The same goes for ‘The Great Fire.’ I devoured it over two days while battling the dreaded Man-Flu. In fact, it was a rather fitting state of mind, as the novel is set in the aftermath of WWII. The world and its people are grappling with the aftereffects of the sickness that is war. Peace has come as a surprise, and the blank faces of trauma are everywhere.

The story begins powerfully in defeated Japan, near the site of Hiroshima. Hazzard's writing is dense and descriptive, providing a window into this world of Hell. She traveled extensively through Asia with her parents immediately after the war, and it shows in her writing, which feels informed by experience rather than just imagination. Her style reminds me of Graham Greene in his non-‘entertainment’ novels. And Hazzard was indeed close friends with Greene. She even makes an allusion to one of his works when the protagonist, Aldred Leith, buys a book by an up-and-coming writer set in West Africa. Since it's 1947, it's almost certainly ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ albeit a year too soon.

Aldred is a war veteran who has received great honors (as well as war wounds) and has become known for his state-of-nation analyses. He walked across China at the end of the war and is now considering the vanquished Japanese. This leads him to a place with Kurtz-like potentialities (unfortunately not fully realized), where he meets a sick boy and the boy's ‘changeling’ sister, who becomes his love interest, despite her age.
There are also excursions to Hong Kong, England, and New Zealand, all described with remarkable skill. A subplot involving Aldred's friend, Peter Exley, starts off well but fizzles out rather prematurely, as if the writer painted herself into a corner and decided to leave her car there. In fact, the whole novel seems to lose its way in the final third. While there is powerful psychological writing overall, there is a sense of sameness in the characters' reactions that makes me think of a writer dictating words to her creations, which is always a bit of a letdown.
I bought this book years ago (along with ‘The Transit of Venus’) after reading that Hazzard is one of the greatest writers in the English language today. But it got pushed down in my reading pile by books I thought were more important. I will read more of her work, but I'm in no rush... A rather damning sentiment.

Question: What could be worse than the horrors of the Second World War?

Answer: Its aftermath.

It is 1947, and war hero Major Aldred Leith is in Japan conducting research for a book. He resides in a compound under two despicable fellow Aussies, Driscoll and his wife. Their two "changeling" children, Benedict and Helen, are entirely different from their parents. Benedict is brilliant but deathly ill, and his sister Helen is almost always by his side. She is fifteen years old, yet Aldred and she manage to fall in love.

They are separated by the parents, who take her off to New Zealand and send the son to a medical specialist in California.

In the meantime, Aldred goes to England to pick up various aspects of his life, such as his mother, his former lover, and a man who knew Helen when she was younger.

Throughout "The Great Fire" - a reference to the war - we encounter scores of characters, mostly fellow Aussies, who are striving to recover their lives. Like one nameless character:

He got off at a country crossroad. Helen, at her bleared window, watched him walk away on a dirt track, smiling abstractedly and slightly swinging a string bag of small packages wrapped in newsprint. Even so, there was the antipodean touch of desolation: the path indistinguishable from all others, the wayside leaves flanneled with dust, the net bag. The walking into oblivion.

Shirley Hazzard's book entranced me during a difficult period in my own life, when I endured the roughest part of tax season with a broken shoulder and considerable pain.

Now, for the first time, I understand why, on my travels, I encounter so many Australians and New Zealanders. It's that "antipodean touch of desolation," I suppose, that isolation from the rest of the world that must have seemed so overwhelming after that conflagration of war.

This story beautifully portrays the aftermath of war, not just in terms of the physical destruction but also the emotional and psychological toll it takes on the characters. The relationships that are formed and broken, the search for meaning and purpose in a post-war world, all add to the depth and complexity of the narrative. Hazzard's writing is细腻 and evocative, painting a vivid picture of a time and place that is both familiar and strange.

As I read "The Great Fire," I was drawn into the lives of the characters and found myself empathizing with their struggles and joys. It made me reflect on the importance of human connection and the power of love in the face of adversity. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in history, literature, or the human condition.

This is a book that I was obligated to read for my book club. It is written in English, yet at times it hardly appears so.

Let's take this sentence as an illustration (which I fabricated myself): "While not quite believing that the exterior sky was truly blue, Elmo wandered into the structure of goods" - in other words, Elmo entered the store. Does this constructed sentence even hold any meaning? Imagine an entire book composed in this manner, and you'll get an idea of what supposedly passes for 'Booker Prize' caliber writing.

The book reminds me of the two-word joke 'Eschew Obfuscation'. There is a plot within, a very simplistic one and perhaps the only thing of significance in the narrative. It's a love story between an elderly army man in Japan near Nagasaki - (The Great Fire) - but we learn nothing about what was happening there. All we can perceive is the ambiguous nonsense concealing the love story between the old man and some 14 or 15-year-old girl. Are you intrigued yet? Don't squander your time!

This book seems to be more about confusing the reader with convoluted language rather than presenting a captivating and coherent story. The writing style makes it difficult to engage with the characters and the plot. It's a real disappointment, especially considering the high praise it has received. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for an enjoyable read.

Hazzard writes in a rather affecting manner in this novel when it comes to the stunned denouement of war. However, its plot, which involves a traumatized soldier finding a new reason to live upon meeting and falling in love with a precocious yet innocent teenage girl, is the stuff of blatant melodrama. The characters are only barely sketched, lacking depth and complexity. The prose is stilted, portentous, and often overly wrought, making it difficult for the reader to fully engage. The author seemingly desires her story to possess epic importance, but unfortunately, it is overly weighted with cliches and romanticism, preventing it from reaching that level. Overall, while there are some elements of emotionality in the writing, the novel falls short in many aspects, leaving the reader with a sense of disappointment.