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54th out of 390 books
—
185 voters
The Great Fire
The year is 1947. The great fire of the Second World War has convulsed Europe and Asia. In its wake, Aldred Leith, an acclaimed hero of the conflict, has spent two years in China at work on an account of world-transforming change there. Son of a famed and sexually ruthless novelist, Leith begins to resist his own self-sufficiency, nurtured by war. Peter Exley, another vete...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
July 1st 2004
by Picador
(first published October 14th 2003)
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"The Transit of Venus" eventually won me over, despite occasional frustration with Shirely Hazzard's mannered and oblique style. But there were relatively few rewards for plodding through this disappointing effort. Hazzard's account of the romance between war veteran Aldred Leith and 17-year old Helen Driscoll spans a large canvas, both geographically and historically - the action unfolds from Hiroshima and Hong Kong to London and Wellington, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, still a t...more
Although I find this book terrible on many levels, I must start by saying that Shirley Hazzard is a good writer. Actually an excellent writer. Looking back on my experience reading the book, I have to say that I often enjoyed the beautiful phrasing long enough to forget what a terrible book this actually is. (as a side note concerning Ms. Hazzards language, if any Australians or New Zealanders happen to read this review, please let me know if you actually use the word "Antipodean" to describe yo...more
The only great thing about "The Great Fire" is its name.
This is one of those books that as you read it, you find yourself lost in thoughts about the morning commute, the long ago expired and still unpaid decal on your front windshield, about the dog, that you forgot to feed and you now know it repaid you by doing its business on the one spot of the carpet, which you fiercely guarded and hoped to protect before the weekend party with your boss and his pricy wife who for some time now has been......more
This is one of those books that as you read it, you find yourself lost in thoughts about the morning commute, the long ago expired and still unpaid decal on your front windshield, about the dog, that you forgot to feed and you now know it repaid you by doing its business on the one spot of the carpet, which you fiercely guarded and hoped to protect before the weekend party with your boss and his pricy wife who for some time now has been......more
Jun 24, 2008
David
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2008,
disappointing
"The Transit of Venus" eventually won me over, despite occasional frustration with Shirely Hazzard's mannered and oblique style. But there were relatively few rewards for plodding through this disappointing effort. Hazzard's account of the romance between war veteran Aldred Leith and 17-year old Helen Driscoll spans a large canvas, both geographically and historically - the action unfolds from Hiroshima and Hong Kong to London and Wellington, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, still a t...more
Total sleeper as far as I'm concerned, but a great book. No one I ever talk to has read it. My mother was given it as a gift and passed it along to me. I almost put it down in the first 30 pages, but am thrilled I kept reading. It's the story of a brother and sister in post WWII Japan who are European and are befriended by an American who is stationed there immediately after the war. The setting is desolate and hopeless and guiltridden, the parents impossibly awful. The soldier is torn about his...more
Feb 18, 2013
Barbara
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Barbara by:
Maria, Merilee
Initially I considered not continuing to read this book because of what I considered a slow pace. Many of my GR friends, whose opinions I often share, had praised this, so I perservered. It is well that I did for I discovered that Hazzard has written an hypnotic, complex novel. Her prose is elegant, vivid and fervent. .
The Great Fire of the title refers to the conflagration which was WW ll, choking and convulsing the world in its wake. The story takes place in the post-war years, mostly in Asi...more
The Great Fire of the title refers to the conflagration which was WW ll, choking and convulsing the world in its wake. The story takes place in the post-war years, mostly in Asi...more
This book was a huge disappointment for me. I don't remember much about it but I cribbed from this positive amazon review--I thought it was funny because all these "good" lines the Amazon reviewer likes are not good to me:
My words are inadequate to describe this book. To paraphrase Ms. Hazzard when she lets one character describe another's beauty by saying "no one has a right to look like that," I say that no one has a right to write like this. Her prose is graceful, concise and descriptive. I w...more
My words are inadequate to describe this book. To paraphrase Ms. Hazzard when she lets one character describe another's beauty by saying "no one has a right to look like that," I say that no one has a right to write like this. Her prose is graceful, concise and descriptive. I w...more
I refer you to David Giltinan's review, which has more intelligent things to say about this novel than I do.
I found the novel opaque...like reading through some kind of scrim...terribly dull & obtuse.
I found the novel opaque...like reading through some kind of scrim...terribly dull & obtuse.
I'm actually reading this for the 2nd time, something I rarely do. I'm really concentrating on the language and imagery this time and loving it even more than I did the first time. Yay, Shirley!
Jan 27, 2009
Lobstergirl
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
men aged 39-47
Recommended to Lobstergirl by:
Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Read this novel for the exquisitely crafted prose. The sentences are understated, spare, austere, yet luscious. Unfortunately, the story itself is skeletal and the main characters with the exception of Aldred Leith thinly sketched. Also, all the characters think and speak in the same spare, luscious voice - which is perhaps believable for a war veteran of 33, but hardly for a 17 year old girl and her teenage brother. No matter how precocious they may be, teenagers don't have enough life experien...more
Apr 23, 2013
Elsa
added it
I'm not rating The Great Fire, because I don't know how to. For overall enjoyment, I'd be hard pressed to rate it more than two stars. On the unbelievable, almost impossibly good, quality of the writing, I want to give it five stars. That aspect of The Great Fire is dense, and beautiful, and totally original — I can't think of anyone else who writes like Shirley Hazzard, and I am awestruck by the craft behind this novel. On the other hand, what good is phenomenal writing if it overpowers the plo...more
There could be dissertations written about the many "great fire" meanings. The most obvious is the bombing of Hiroshima, where the book first starts. Aldred Leitch is a hero of WWII and takes time to wander China to record the lives of the people before their lives are turned upside down. He goes to occupied Japan for something to do with his military job and ends up in Kure, a village outside Hiroshima. There he encounters two young people who are living with their very strangely uninterested a...more
‘“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident’” (Edward W. Said 1867).
As if to highlight that such overarching terminology is not in itself definitive or representative of all Asian countries and cultures, Shirley Hazzard’s novel, The Great Fire, depicts Hong Kong and Japan from Aldred Leith’s and Peter Exley’s individual points of view. However, their descriptions still retain the very...more
As if to highlight that such overarching terminology is not in itself definitive or representative of all Asian countries and cultures, Shirley Hazzard’s novel, The Great Fire, depicts Hong Kong and Japan from Aldred Leith’s and Peter Exley’s individual points of view. However, their descriptions still retain the very...more
Another book that took me an awfully long time to read. Like Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter", I found it difficult to get a hold on anyone in this book. Set in all sorts of places but at least initially in post-WWII Japan, it tells the story of Aldred Leith, ex-soldier, and somewhat of an expert in the affairs of China and the East (he spent a two years walking through China, just sort of seeing what it was like. In Japan, he encounters the Driscolls, an ex-patriot Australian family. The paren...more
Here you can watch our book trailer for The Great Fire, which won the 2003 National Book Award. It is reported to have taken Shirley Hazzard twenty years to write. Set in post-war Japan in 1947, the book follows Aldred Leith, an intellectual British war hero. The focus of the book is love, and Hazzard has written, love is, 'perhaps the most interesting phenomenon, it's almost like a spell that's cast on us, falling in love, that is. There is nothing else like it in life, and I think it is a cen...more
Imagine if Jane Austen had returned to travel the world in the mid-20th century and to read novelists like Henry James, E.M. Forster and Graham Greene. What might she have written? Something like Shirley Hazzard's ''The Great Fire''?
Austen lived through a turbulent era, when the Napoleonic wars were raging, yet she stubbornly kept the great world outside of her novels. Her world was made up of small English villages, and she persistently saw it through the eyes of her female protagonists.
Hazza...more
I read this for my book group and would not have struggled through it without that incentive. Not for a long time have I felt like I was slogging through a narrative sooooo slowly... it took me ages to get through every 10-page increment. You know how your mind sometimes wanders when you read? If I wandered for even a paragraph, I was lost again. I felt like I had such a tentative hold on this story throughout most of it. Part three (the final section) moved more quickly for me, and I wonder if...more
The Great Fire, was good in some ways, and bad in other ways. Some of the bad things were that it was really hard to follow: there were many different story lines going on at the same time, and they switched them around to quickly.
The Great Fire was one of those books that starts out boring, but if you continue to read or listen to it you'll notice yourself wanting to know what happens next. This book goes through the lives of the people during the fire and shows their hardships through great d...more
The Great Fire was one of those books that starts out boring, but if you continue to read or listen to it you'll notice yourself wanting to know what happens next. This book goes through the lives of the people during the fire and shows their hardships through great d...more
Occasionally a book comes along that is unlike anything else I've ever read. This is one of those, and it is not a book for the masses. Especially today's masses. It's like poetry where one needs to stop and figure out the metaphor or decipher the meaning of a phrase or word by how it's used. Or mentally translate it into how you, the reader, would have said the same thing. Personally, I loved this - I like to think of it as doing doing word puzzles. At times it made for a disjointed reading exp...more
This a book that I had to read for my book club. It is in English, but hardly seems like it at times. Take this sentence as an example (my own creation): "While not quite thinking that the outside sky was truly blue, Elmo meandered into the edifice of goods" - meaning, Elmo went into the store. Does that created sentence even make sense? Think of an entire book written this way and you have the idea of what apparently constitutes 'Booker Prize' level of writing. The book reminds me of the two wo...more
I had a similar reaction to my friend Janice, who said she had some initial reservations about the style but eventually came to appreciate it very much. The Great Fire of the title is World War II, although there are several lesser "great fires" referred to along the way and it's also a love story. I loved the way she explored the immediate aftermath of WWII in less familiar places (to me) - Japan and China - in terms of people trying to recall or rediscover how to live in a tentative peacetime...more
All war love stories seem to involve exiles, and this one did too -- between an English soldier, Aldred Leith, who seems to wander China and Japan in order to find an Australian girl, Helen, described as a "changeling," who hides within books and her dying brother. Despite the universal theme, this exiled love was surprizingly original and rather nice, especially admidst all of the suffering and loss associated with WWII, which Hazzard does not attempt to sugarcoat. I'm not sure what it is that...more
As beautiful as the painting that is used to illustrate the cover. Hazzard's writing is mesmerizing, and for that alone she totally deserved her prize. Such writing is pure art, it's literature at its best. The story happens to be as compelling and powerful, in a classic way that brings us back to a certain kind of Anglo-saxon tradition of story-telling.
I'd like to say this book failed me, but considering the slew of accolades this novel garnered, I'm pretty sure the shortcoming lies with me. Perhaps this book was too brilliant for a lowly reader like me to comprehend, but I can't shake the feeling that it was purposefully too clever ( i.e. borderline oblique) for its own good. I'm not sure who Shirley Hazzard imagines her audience to be, but she seems to expect them to know the word "pusilanimous" by heart. In fact, I had to buy a dictionary a...more
This is another terrific book about the ravages of war. Hazard is a gifted and insightful writer whose story about a fairly ordinary young Englishman posted to Japan to help with the reconstruction and a proper English girl whose family has been stationed there is very good.
For those of you who have viewed my books of late, you've probably noticed that I do have lots of WWII and refugee themes running throughout. No apologies. I think it is was a really profound part of our history and, of late...more
For those of you who have viewed my books of late, you've probably noticed that I do have lots of WWII and refugee themes running throughout. No apologies. I think it is was a really profound part of our history and, of late...more
Such wonderful writing, even if there is too much of it. Several classic scenes and characters stand out – Ginger Gardiner’s final night, the first appearance of the Driscolls, the Dutch sea captain and his war crimes deposition, the forlorn descriptions of New Zealand. And I was struck by this line: “A man who hasn’t killed is incomplete, analogous to a woman who has never given birth.”
By Part 3, the words add up again. The main problem is that I wasn’t much interested in the central romance....more
By Part 3, the words add up again. The main problem is that I wasn’t much interested in the central romance....more
I first started reading this book a number of years ago; by the time I reached page 3, I had given up. The prose, while well written, just wasn't for me. It reminded me of reading Paradise Lost in school... the constant rereading of sentence after sentence. While Paradise Lost had the benefit on angels being cast out into hell, violence and the like... this one had had a man in his 30's (I refuse to use middle aged) in love with a newly turned 17 year old.
I picked it up again three months ago,...more
I picked it up again three months ago,...more
Jul 14, 2011
Patricia
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
adults interested in post WWII, romance
Recommended to Patricia by:
no one
Shirley Hazzard has a very distinct, and at times difficult, style of writing. Her prose is mostly stream of consciousness mixed with dialogue. What makes it difficult reading is that the style so perfectly mimics post WWII British and Australian conversational tone. She also refers to many things current to that time, which is unknown today, without any explanation. Given all that her style is intoxicating and the end makes the journey worthwhile. By the time she is done you feel very connected...more
Set in what was then called "the Far East" in the aftermath of World War II, The Great Fire is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer. The novel examines how lives and even cultures have been forever altered by the war, and demonstrates how people caught in its grasp struggle to see themselves as having free will and being able to make choices; it urges those who have managed to evade catastrophe to seize life and live it. The characters are convincing and indelible: Aldred Leith, the...more
When I saw this book on the bookshelves a little while ago, I couldn't remember that I had read it. In re-reading it, I find myself wondering how I could have forgotten the author's exquisite writing. It took her years and years to write it.
This post-war love story could be simply told (or made into a movie), but there are complex issues surrounding it, the plot taking place in Japan and Europe right after we dropped the Bomb. As a work of fiction, the depth by which Hazzard has researched pre-...more
This post-war love story could be simply told (or made into a movie), but there are complex issues surrounding it, the plot taking place in Japan and Europe right after we dropped the Bomb. As a work of fiction, the depth by which Hazzard has researched pre-...more
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Author of fiction and non-fiction. Born in Australia, Shirley Hazzard now holds citizenship in Great Britain and the United States.
Hazzard was born in Sydney, Australia. In 1947 she traveled through Southeast Asia with her parents.
Her diplomat father took her to Hong Kong, and then to New Zealand where her father was Australian Trade Commissioner. She travelled to Italy in 1956, and worked for a y...more
More about Shirley Hazzard...
Hazzard was born in Sydney, Australia. In 1947 she traveled through Southeast Asia with her parents.
Her diplomat father took her to Hong Kong, and then to New Zealand where her father was Australian Trade Commissioner. She travelled to Italy in 1956, and worked for a y...more
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“My need of your words: for such closeness there should be a word beyond love."
Helen, to Leith, in "The Great Fire”
—
2 people liked it
Helen, to Leith, in "The Great Fire”
“They walked off on the earthy path, laughing not quite naturally, for they could hardly help being pleased by the momentary attention of descending passengers and by their own almost meritorious youth.”
—
1 person liked it
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updated Feb 08, 2009 11:37am