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. ( )

incredible writing, family issues, war, love story

To see my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2010/02/06/the-bay-of-noon-by-shirley-hazzard/ ( )

I read this novel during the late summer of 2008. In it a young English woman living in Naples in the aftermath of World war II meets an Italian writer. A simple enough encounter, and it leads to a friendship with both the writer, felicitously named Gioconda, and the writer's lover Gianni, a Roman film director. This book is short, yet far from simple as the encounter contrasts both the trio and a fourth person, a Scotsman named Justin, and highlights the background of each of the characters as their lives are woven together. Shirley Hazzard demonstrates here the style that would lead to her award-winning novel, The Transit of Venus, a decade later.

In The Bay of Noon we have a simple story that is made large through the novelist's deft phrases and characterization. Notably the city of Naples itself becomes an important character reacting with and in turn influencing the life of young Jenny. Each of the lives are portrayed with an arc that is believable and, in part, tragic as life can sometimes be. The journey depicted is one of beauty and ultimate satisfaction for the reader.

The Bay of Noon was a National Book Award finalist (Fiction, 1971). Shirley Hazzard was married to the noted biographer Francis Steegmuller who died in 1994. I have previously read and enjoyed The Transit of Venus, Hazzard's masterful family saga that was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1980. ( )