This is just way too bleeping much! It's so confusing that it's driving me crazy. The women in this seem to be just overly exaggerated, and I really have no clue what the whole point of it is supposed to be.

I supposed that if I were stuck in some remote place with absolutely nothing else to read, not even a cereal box, then maybe I would consider rereading it. But seriously, I have no intention of subscribing to the idea of being a martyr to a book.

I simply cannot imagine having an ordinary, day-to-day sort of conversation with the author. Surely, she must not speak in the same convoluted way that she writes.

In my opinion, it's best to just skip this one and go find something truly enjoyable to read and report on. There are so many great books out there waiting to be discovered, and this one just doesn't seem worth the effort.

I had never before heard of Ms Hazzard, but I am truly delighted to have come across her novel. At the beginning, I found it rather difficult to follow the storyline. However, as the novel advanced, I became completely immersed in the tale of two sisters who were orphaned at an early age. They leave Australia and journey to England in search of happiness.

I did not initially feel a connection to any of the characters. Nevertheless, their complex personalities, the motives behind their actions, and all that life presented to them compelled me to listen to the audiobook almost continuously. Paul's full story, which was revealed at the end of the novel, left a lasting impression on me.

Ms Stevenson, the narrator, reads exquisitely, as she always does. Her voice is a perfect match for Ms Hazzard's fictional world.

*A huge thank-you to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for providing me with a free audiobook in exchange for my honest review.*

It's taken me several weeks to deeply contemplate what I desire to say about The Transit of Venus. This is one of the most remarkable books I've read in a long while. During this time, I've delved into a great deal of information about Shirley Hazzard, and come to a better understanding of her writing approach. She was so dedicated to the pursuit of perfection that she penned only four novels.

This, her third novel, won the 1980 US National Book Critics Circle Award. It's quite unusual for a writer born and raised in Australia. However, Hazzard was an exceptionally cosmopolitan woman for her era (1931 - 2016) and eventually became a citizen of both the US and Australia.

More than 20 years passed before her fourth book, The Great Fire, emerged. This work also won the National Book Award for fiction (2003) and Australia’s Miles Franklin Award. It too is truly wonderful - I read it years ago, and it remains vividly in my memory.

Hazzard's writing simply jumps off the page. Every single word and every sentence is precisely as it should be to achieve the effect she intended.

In an interview, she stated that truth is everything. Words must convey truth, and writing must convey truth; otherwise, there's no point in writing. And this is precisely what she accomplishes.

I often found myself brought up short by a description or a phrase. It's marvellous. She bravely tackles the subject of love in numerous moods and forms. While Barbara Pym’s work is also acutely observed, her characters inhabit rather negative worlds. In contrast, Hazzard’s characters experience intense joy, pain, disillusion, and even contempt as their relationships progress - some end in failure, some blossom, and some slowly wither away.

If I were to attempt to summarize Transit of Venus, I'm certain I would trivialize it, as most brief descriptions of the book do.

I'm going to quote from a 2021 New York Times review by Parul Seghal. He has managed to capture some of its complexity and uses some of Hazzard’s own words.

'The plot is chaste and simplicity itself. I can stuff it into one sentence. Two orphaned Australian sisters arrive in England in the 1950s: placid, fair Grace, who marries a wealthy and officious bureaucrat, and independent, dark-haired Caroline, who falls in love with the unscrupulous (and attached) Paul Ivory, while another man, the shabby and sweet Ted Tice, pines for her.

Nothing unduly challenging - except, perhaps, that the book is precisely about the misapprehensions of youth, of missing the point and those late-in-life revelations that return us to elemental questions - “Who are the weak?” Caroline wonders. “Who are the strong?”

It’s a novel about being wrong about this question and so many others, about our gorgeous and distressing human confidence, the way we march around, plucky protagonists in our minds, armed with horrifyingly partial knowledge of the motivations of those around us. To say nothing of the forces we cannot see. Hazzard’s stories are always enfolded in larger histories, of geological time, of empire’s “jagged devastations” and the long shadow of World War I, which darkens almost every page of this novel, in the broken bodies of former soldiers, the “scabs” of blackout paint on the windows, the cowed fright of the characters, even at their calmest. As the sisters sit, eating dessert, Hazzard lingers on their necks - “intolerably exposed,” she writes. “You could practically feel the axe.”'

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Christian, the ‘wealthy and officious bureaucrat’, visits the sisters for the first time, already smitten with gentle Grace. “He found these women uncommonly self-possessed for their situation. They seemed scarcely conscious of being Australians in a furnished flat. He would have liked them to be more impressed by his having come, and instead found himself living up to what he thought might be their standards and hoping they would not guess the effort incurred. Quickness came back to him like a neglected talent summoned in an emergency: as if he rose in trepidation to a platform and cleared his throat to sing.

The room itself appeared unawed by him - not from any disorder but from very naturalness. A room where there had been expectation would have conveyed the fact - by a tension of plumped cushions and placed magazines.... this room was quite without such anxiety. On its upholstery, the nap of the usual was undisturbed."

Some examples of her writing:

Ted Tice, (who is not of the right class) thinking on class gulfs and humiliation: Men can make up soon enough with enemies who slaughtered them in battle, but never with the brethren who humiliated them in cold blood. They take reprisal on their own shame - that is what makes all hatreds, in war, in class or in love.

Caro to Paul after they had begun their sexual relationship:

There must be an end somewhere to deception. Ultimately there must be the truth’.

‘and do you think the human need to deceive is not also part of the truth?’

‘Of reality, not truth.’

Paul evades, of course, and then impregnates his wife, ending the relationship with Caro. To end it, perhaps?

American Adam Vail, at the beginning of his relationship with Caro (p186): ‘He thought most men would hardly dare touch her, or only with anger, because she would not pretend anything was casual. It was unflattering, what she was apparently willing to dispense with in consequence of this belief’.

Adam says ‘Our great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon, rather than a civilization. Hence, in part, the scale, the insistence, the need to prove the great mysteries obsolete or serviceable. We want our lust to be loved and called beautiful. To receive the homage due to love’.

A sentence on a conversation with the boy Felix: ‘Monosyllables were planted like bollards, closing every avenue’ of conversation. P 292

Some background on Hazzard.

Although she grew up in Sydney in the 1930s and 40s, her father joined the diplomatic service and was posted to Hong Kong in 1947 when Shirley was 16. Then they returned to Australia, then to New Zealand, and when she was 20, the family moved to New York, where she worked for the United Nations as a typist for 10 years. During that time, she was posted to Naples in Italy for a year and continued to visit Italy throughout her life, eventually living between Italy and New York with her writer husband, Francis Steegmuller.

In addition to fiction, Hazzard wrote two nonfiction books critical of the United Nations: Defeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990). Defeat of an Ideal presents evidence of the apparently widespread McCarthyism in the Secretariat from 1951 to 1955. [9] Countenance of Truth alleges that senior international diplomats had been aware of the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim yet allowed him to rise through the Secretariat ranks to the position of Secretary-General, a claim she first made in a 1980 New Republic article. [2][9] Her collection of short stories, People in Glass Houses, is presented as a satire on \\"The Organisation\\", manifestly inspired by the United Nations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley....

The Wikipedia entry from which I’ve just quoted doesn't mention whether she lived in England, or for how long, but in Transit of Venus she shows an acute awareness of English class prejudices and behaviours, political and social nastiness and bureaucratic intrigue.

Brigitta Olubas has recently published a literary biography of Hazzard, which is waiting for me on my actual bookshelves. Review at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Reviews

New York Times 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/bo...

Charlotte Wood in Sydney Review of Books https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay...

Three from the Paris Review

https://www.theparisreview.org/interv...

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...

Michele de Kretser https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...

In On Shirley Hazzard: Writers on Writers gives many examples of Hazards' acuity of observation and genius of expression.

**Title: An Astonishing Discovery**

In the world of science, there are often moments that leave us in awe. Recently, an astonishing discovery has been made that has the potential to change our understanding of a particular field.

The research team, consisting of experts from various disciplines, was conducting an experiment when they stumbled upon something completely unexpected.

This discovery challenges many of the existing theories and assumptions, and has opened up a whole new avenue of research.

Scientists are now working around the clock to further investigate this phenomenon and understand its implications.

The implications of this discovery could be far-reaching, potentially leading to new breakthroughs in medicine, technology, and other areas.

As more information becomes available, we can expect to see a flurry of activity in the scientific community as researchers争相 to build on this astonishing discovery.

This is truly an exciting time for science, and we can't wait to see what the future holds.

Look.

I have a full-time job. I also have a wife and two young kids. They all have their needs. There are dozens of shows on my watchlist. Chores are waiting to be done. Meals must be prepared and taken. I've got various projects to handle.

But all I really want to do is read this book again, now that I've already read it once.

This book compels me with a kind of resonant observation. It doesn't rely on meticulous details or sparkling language. It's not the kind of book that is effervescent, or has sentences that skip like stones across a lake. Instead, it has an energy that feels primordial. It is more like the giant fungi you read about, which spread for miles underground. The fruit of it appears to us here and there as extraordinary little mushrooms. Each chapter is grounded in a deeper source that is unseen. It does its work at the pace of one of the oldest living organisms on Earth.

This is a love story, after all (though that's not all it is; see Charlotte Wood in the Sydney Review of Books). The distance between sentences implies volumes of somethings that are left unrecognized or unsaid. These volumes comprise an unexpected structure of indefinite shape and size which, at any moment, might give itself away with a gesture, a glance, revealing to us the extent of our desire. We might talk about an astronomical event, boarding a plane, or "a reserve of hope, in spite of everything" but what we really meant to say was something else entirely.

Add this to this list of amazing books I've read in the past year or so. It stands alongside Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin and The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. Most of my 5-star books earn that rating mainly because I loved reading them and found them excellent. However, a few meet that criterion and are something more. They are amazing in that I haven't read anything quite like them before. The Transit of Venus fits this last category, just like Winter's Tale and The Unconsoled.

I think what makes The Transit of Venus stand out for me is Shirley Hazzard's sublime mastery of the English language. This woman can write, and she writes in a voice and style I haven't come across before. I don't think her writing would be to everyone's taste, but it suits mine. Her word use is precise, yet not simple and rarely easy. I wanted to slow down to enjoy her sentences. Truthfully, I often also had to slow down to understand them. I like to be slowed down. Too often I tend to rush, after all, there are a stack of books I want to read before I die. I found great rewards in pleasure and insight by reading slowly and carefully.

Overall, this is a rather dark and gloomy portrayal of romantic love. This book was recommended to me because I like Thomas Hardy. I did sense that Hardy vibe, although I can't quite put it into words. Maybe it's an overriding feeling that if something bad could happen, it would. Maybe it's a sense that the characters were doomed to certain outcomes and there was no escaping these fates.

This is one of the saddest books I've ever read.

It truly requires a remarkable talent to evoke such a persistently depressing malaise throughout almost every chapter and nearly every scene.

Hazzard presents us with a cast of characters who are seemingly fated never to experience happiness.

They appear to be doomed by a perverse conspiracy to make poor choices, attach themselves to the wrong and doomed individuals, and only discover too late that they could have and should have done otherwise.

Of course, it is Hazzard herself who is the Conspirator.

Occasionally, I wondered why she was so resolutely determined to prevent the happiness of her own creations.

Nevertheless, it doesn't matter.

The book is exceptionally well-written, with certain passages that linger in the mind long after it has been set aside.

However, it does suffer from the author's inclination to put exquisitely crafted observations, often overly philosophical, into the mouths of her characters.

In reality, people simply don't communicate with each other in such a manner.

Nonetheless, it is still a very impressive work.

What a truly remarkable read this book is!

It continuously offers so much, and the final plot twist is simply outstanding.

At first, it took me some time to adapt to the writing style and language, but soon I became completely engrossed. The characters are intense and multi-faceted, and the descriptions are sharp and humorous.

For example, “Tertia’s mother said, ‘She spoils every dinner party she attends.’ Fond and proud. Crushing a billowing blue sofa, Lady Drage now became a creature too heavy for its elements, a cormorant on the waves.”

The three sisters, Dora, Caro, and Grace, arrive in London together shortly after the Second World War. The timing of their arrival and the subsequent 30 years covered by the novel witness the struggle against patriarchy, class division, and the establishment beginning to crumble, yet still having an impact on their lives and relationships. Each sister makes decisions that cause their future paths and happiness to diverge.

The men in this book are also fascinating, although not generally in a positive way. I detested Christian and his abhorrent mealy-mouthed comments. I can't even begin to elaborate on Paul, but you really need to reach the end of the book to understand him!

Hazzard captures the changing times exquisitely with precise and pared-back descriptions of locations, making you feel as if you are always in the moment.

Hazzard is a writer who shows no mercy to her characters or the reader.

She has a unique way of presenting the story and the events that unfold. It's as if she skillfully slides the knife in, but does it so beautifully that you don't even realize you're being filleted.

Her writing is not for the faint of heart. It challenges you and makes you face the harsh realities that she portrays.

Yet, despite the pain and discomfort that her stories may cause, there is a certain allure to them.

You can't help but be drawn in by her words and the world she creates.

Hazzard's ability to write with such precision and intensity is truly remarkable.

She forces you to look beyond the surface and explore the deeper emotions and themes that lie beneath.

In the end, you may find yourself changed by her work, having gained a new perspective on life and the human condition.

In this captivating piece of literature,

the motives of the characters are exquisitely described.

The author employs a rich and ornate language that truly brings the story to life.

Each character's inner desires, hopes, and fears are delicately unraveled,

allowing the reader to delve deep into their psyches.

The detailed portrayal of the characters' motives adds a layer of complexity and authenticity to the narrative.

It makes the story not only engaging but also thought-provoking.

One can't help but be drawn in by the beautifully crafted descriptions and the insights they offer into the human condition.

The use of ornate language further enhances the overall aesthetic of the piece,

creating a vivid and immersive reading experience.

Whether it's the protagonist's quest for love and acceptance

or the antagonist's drive for power and revenge,

the motives of the characters are presented in a way that is both captivating and unforgettable.

Overall, this is a remarkable work of literature that showcases the author's mastery of language and storytelling.

The story revolves around two orphaned Australian sisters who journey to post-war England. Grace is the more traditional one, well-suited for domestic life. On the other hand, Caro is far more rebellious and difficult to tame. She spurns the advances of the nice guy and instead falls for the bad guy. Paul, a successful playwright on the verge of marrying the aristocratic Tertia, embarks on an affair with Caro. He is a complex character, morally corrupt yet captivating with his charm and intelligence. Ted, another of Caro's suitors, can only watch helplessly but remains devoted to her throughout the novel.

One of the recurring features in Hazzard's works is that the most dramatic moments occur off-stage, so to speak. This holds true for both Paul and Ted, as they both have secrets that they reveal rather than Hazzard showing them directly.

This novel is even more exquisitely written than her The Great Fire. Hazzard displays great wisdom and perceptiveness when it comes to romantic love. Her observations often left me feeling excited and enlightened. Sadly, I have now read all of her books.

I'm certain that I must be lacking something. There is something amiss in my taste, perhaps. However, I found this particular piece of work to be overly written and quite annoying.

It was difficult for me to establish a connection with the characters. Only in brief and rare moments did I manage to get a glimmer of understanding or a sense of proximity to them.

The writing seemed convoluted and overly elaborate, which detracted from the overall experience. It felt as if the author was trying too hard to impress rather than simply telling a story in a straightforward and engaging manner.

As a result, I struggled to maintain my interest and found myself constantly being pulled out of the narrative. I hope that future works will focus more on simplicity and authenticity, allowing the characters and the story to shine through without the need for excessive ornamentation.