The Transit of Venus in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 12, 2011 Steve rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I was torn as to how to rate Shirley Hazzard's Transit of Venus. Hazzard is an enormously gifted writer. But the novel itself had me asking the question, When does a great writer become a great artist? It's a fine distinction that one doesn't come across often, since such things unfold on their own. The discerning reader simply knows when they've read a great piece of literature. But Hazzard's own ambition here had me asking that very question. In other words, one gets the sense that Hazzard, in ...more

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Mar 14, 2016 Rachel rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, classics, fiction

The writing is technically brilliant but the author keeps the reader completely away from emotional connection of any kind to the characters. There's this diamond like sheen of the 50's to the 80's, where we are supposed to root for the two sisters to succeed in a man's world and to allow them to disengage from sex and marriage as being the only thing in life to live for, and as lofty as those goals are in the world of a novel I would like to care about the characters as people rather than ideal ...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Daisy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites-2nd-place, ny, england, australia, sweden

What a funny-ugly copy I have. It looks like a drugstore romance. I'm only at the beginning but so far it has sentences like this: "Her eyes were enlarged and faded with discovering what, by common human agreement, is better undivulged."

(I paused for a few weeks and I've picked it back up now. Hazzard's writing is biting and sly and oh-so perceptive. She puns too and doesn't take herself to seriously. I have to learn about her.) 8-14-10

Finished:
I underlined a lot.
Red dresses and mono-syllabic la ...more

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