The Great Fire

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 show more 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. show less

In this exceptional story, Shirley Hazzard gives us the eternal story of Aldred and Helen, thrown together in the chaotic and threatening aftermath of the Second World War. He's a major in the British Army who re-upped at war's end to study the effects of war on old cultures. She is the daughter of horrid and ambitious parents and has a terminally ill brother to whom she is devoted. She's loyal, erudite, fifteen years Aldred's junior, and falls unalterably in love with him. War's fortunes and the designs of empires unfortunately separate them and put an entire world between them - he is sent back the the U.K., and Helen goes with her family to her father's new posting in New Zealand.

There are several Great Fires here. One is World War show more II itself, and one is specifically the bombing of Hiroshima. Another is Aldred and Helen's love. Ms. Hazzard's prose comes across as reserved and cautionary, but is deeply touched by what we witness. The intellect and the heart are both deep, and deeply affected. Our author inspires awe at our renewed understanding of the power of language.

Our hero Aldred is a very virtuous man. He hides his severe wounds,which are physical as well as emotional. He is aghast in the wake of war and weary in the role of occupier (his superiors assign him to a study of Hiroshima after The Bomb). His friends and colleagues see it, too: one potential rival for Helen's heart gives up the field when he comes to know Aldred better.

Besides a very memorable love story, this is also the story of civilization and hope surviving cataclysm. (Not to spoil anything, but the force of Helen's and Aldred's love will at length not be denied.) Helen's beloved brother dies, and the cataclysm becomes close and personal. Aldred helps people in the U.K. - our author never flinches in her willingness to protray sympathetic characters - minor heroes - of either sex or any age. (The secondary characters would make a very fertile area of study.)

I honor Ms. Hazzard. I recommend this piece in the highest terms possible. Would that she produced fiction more often - I will definitely be taking up her other novels. Wow. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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; show more 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! show less

I am trying not to be over-influenced by the learned voices on the cover lauding this book as a work of genius because I thought it was as dull as ditchwater. I think it’s fiction aimed at people who read books on a higher plane, where realistic dialogue is not required, and indeed nothing needs to happen from one page to the next. One can simply sit back and admire a well turned metaphor.

The post-war Japan setting seemed interesting enough, and I was hoping it would have some educational value, but what we got instead was a lukewarm love story in which a guy takes a fancy to a girl practically half his age (anyone else find that distinctly icky?) despite hardly knowing eachother, and conduct a stiff courtship described by a narrative show more voice reminiscent of the Pathe Newsreel. There was nothing to hook the reader, no handholds, nothing. I really didn’t like it - maybe that makes me a literary philistine, but so be it. show less

I enjoyed this novel a lot, not the least for reading it while living through another time when mass trauma seems to manifest itself everywhere and there is a constant awareness that things are changing, in my case in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and protest against police brutality and systemic racism. It was comforting, in an odd way, to read about characters making their way through the wreckage of world war, and choosing a path toward happiness.

Started off excruciatingly slowly and was very hard to get into. The characters seemed so insubstantial at first, but as time went on Hazzard built them up through inference and action, and I was able to comprehend them as real beings. The book is written in a style more in line with the time it takes place, rather than the early 2000s. Beautiful set pieces, opaque dialogue, elliptical plots in which much takes place off stage, so to speak. The style reminds me somewhat of Elizabeth Bowen or Henry Green.

The pure physicality of place and evocation of sites as separate as the Japanese hills outside Hiroshima, or Hong Kong, or provincial Wellington, or bombed-out postwar London is spectacular. Worth reading for the writing alone, though show more don't expect a plot of much moment. show less