The Transit of Venus

So I read this after having read Hazzard's The Great Fire, which was okay, because someone on some lit site said it was her favorite book ever. Not mine, but I am appreciative of the skill of the writer, in doing such excellent reveals of the inner thoughts of her characters, and of spinning plots that have a unique balance between personal lives and worldly events. It all takes place right after WWII, mostly in Australia and England, and focuses on two beautiful (of course) sisters who make sensible and unwise choices. If you've ever read any Rosamund Lehmann, a mostly forgotten Brit novelist of the WW I epoch, you'll get it. There's a ton of passion, fulfilled and -un. It does harken back to the first world war, though, in the show more settings and just the overall feeling of the places and the formality of the language and of the relationships. But, ultimately, annoyingly, there's an ending that is very difficult to interpret. SPOILER ALERT STARTS NOW. The future death of one of the characters (Ted) is announced very early on. There's the easy-to-misinterpret line "For the last time, Caroline Vail lay in a bed alone." And the very last line, "Only, as the plane rose from the ground, a long hiss of air - like the intake of humanity's breath when a work of ages shrivels in an instant; or the great gasp of hull and ocean as a ship goes down." Hazzard herself said that the ending was a happy one. Google it and there are scholarly works devoted to figuring out the ending. Too obtuse for me, but I might think better of it as it fades from memory. This is one damned singular work, for sure. show less

From the opening pages of this novel, I was captivated by Shirley Hazzard’s concise descriptive prose and her ability to poetically frame each scene. Even better was her skill of bringing each of her characters fully alive by digging into thoughts and motivations to reveal their true selves. Published in 1980, The Transit of Venus was Hazzard’s third published work, and it is considered by many to be her masterpiece. The story centers primarily on two Australian sisters, Caro and Grace Bell, who, in early adulthood, emigrate to England in the early 1950s. The book chronicles their lives into middle age, focusing on love, and marriage, and contrasting youthful hopes and dreams with life’s realities.

The sisters take much different show more paths in life. Grace marries a government bureaucrat and soon finds herself raising three children. Caro, on the other hand, has a passionate love affair with an engaged playwright which ends poorly, and this sets her life off on an unexpected trajectory. Hazzard has a gift of capturing their sensual relationships with the different men that come into their lives, both in marriage and by the temptations outside it. The story concentrates mostly on Caro, but Grace is given her due, as well. So too are the men in their lives, especially Ted Tice, whom Caro meets as a young woman and who becomes devoted to her throughout his life, even though his passion for her is not returned.

Through the story’s complexities, we are brought to care deeply about its main characters. It is not a light, easy read by any means, but the attention it demands is richly rewarded. The Transit of Venus assembles life’s passions, sorrows, betrayals and redemptions into a satisfying whole. Hazzard, who died in 2016 at age eight-five, is an author who might not be well known to the average reader, but should be. show less

"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 show more 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... show less

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!

I have been thinking about how to review this book for three days and still don't really know what to say about it. It is an impressively controlled piece of storytelling - the reader's knowledge is always a little ahead of the characters, but the author keeps a few key revelations up her sleeve. Reading it over 40 years after its publication and many years more after the events early in the story, it does inevitably show its age - much of it is set in a lost world where for most women the only options were low paid drudgery or marriage, and Caro's journey is both moving and plausible. The narrative is rich and multi-layered, and Hazzard uses language with precision. Despite the title, astronomy has a very peripheral role in the story.

One can assume the characters in Shirley Hazzard’s "The Transit of Venus" have guiding principles in their lives, a moral framework by which to behave. After all, they lead exemplary outward lives for the most part. However, when Venus transits between them and their principles, when love gets in the way, everything turns to heartache and loss. For multiple characters, thoughts run toward suicide.

Some of what follows will make the reader think this is a dreary or depressing book, because people do suffer disappointment and yearning, sometimes for many years. But the experience of reading The Transit of Venus will redeem you; the author’s rich prose concoction not only intoxicates on an aesthetic level, but also stimulates reflection show more on the vagaries of human relationships.

This novel lives in several thematic neighborhoods. One thought Ms. Hazzard repetitively focuses on is the insurmountable gap between what people feel and what they say. She expresses this chasm in chopped-up, incomplete conversational sentences, in which trite and over-worn phrases are thought of, and not always even spoken. People speak or think in these fragments and the effect is extraordinary and blunting. People hide their emotions from everyone except themselves. Several times, while the author was carrying this off, I wanted to yell at the character, “Get real for once! Just say what’s on your mind.”

Morality is another lynchpin here. And by morality I mean the scale which measures what people do or don’t do for each other – the balance of their motivation: does it tilt toward themselves or toward others? This book is replete with selfishness, particularly on the part of the male characters. Characters keep a running score of the ebb and flow of personal power in relationships (or Ms. Hazzard does it for them), and the tides of these skirmishes shift back and forth in single conversations. (That feature reminded me of Henry James, but with a clear narrative flow.)

A tall, lovely woman named Caroline (“Caro”) Bell lives at the center of this narrative, and is thoroughly buffeted by its events. Her sister Grace is lovely too, with a strong resemblance to Caro, albeit more lightly complected. Because of a fatal accident on a Sydney Harbor ferry in which they lose both parents, the sisters grow up with a relation named Dora, who is stunningly selfish and self-dramatizing – always working for advantage through a combination of brow-beating and playing the martyr. The girls reach adulthood in Great Britain with grave misgivings about life and people, and barely have the wherewithal to support each other. The inclination is there, but the training, or custom, is not.

Enter the men: Paul Ivory is a handsome, fashionable playwright, at ease with others either singly or in large groups. It isn’t long before Caro falls in love with him. Ted Tice, an astronomer, falls in love with Caro at about the same time. Christian Thrale, son of a stuffy, distinguished scientist, opts for Grace early on, considering Caro a bit too rich for his blood. Relationships come and go – or let’s say the assignations are there for the plucking – and the men generally skirt around the consequences, playing havoc with the female populace. Caro’s Paul marries into nobility and money, but Caro eventually finds an American philanthropist, happiness and marriage, in New York. Quite near the end of the book, the reason for the continual and unexplained emotional undercurrent – the hatred and recrimination displayed mostly by Ted and Paul – becomes clear. Suffice it so say, the final alignments are what they should be.

The stunning emotional depth of this novel – Ms. Hazzard catches with pinpoint precision the internal dialogs of love and pain and yearning – gives it its great gravitas. That, and the author’s clear moral stance. The emotions are obviously a great strength – this book plumbs even greater depths than her National Book Award-winning The Great Fire (2003) (a book I greatly treasure and honor). The diction, which ranges from stunted and halting to full, sophisticated and eloquent, provides an exact gauge for characters’ commitment or openness.

This review is running to excess. I would love to tackle main character Caro in more depth, but alas … Nevertheless, this book is another example of why I pick up books in the first place. It rewards, it impresses, it lets me live for a while with a stunningly brilliant writer and just … be taken along for the ride.

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