Rating: 
Summary: my literary reaction
Review: In the penumbrous, shadowy twilight, reading, alone. I come upon this passage - page 107 paragraph 9. The phrase " Pattie's pusillanimous plait". Tentative fingers play upon winter-scorched lips. The book is flung across the room. Discarded. Alone.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed excellence at a glacial pace
Review: Shirley Hazzard's new book, The Great Fire, is a worthwhile read. The writing is excellent, as one would expect from such an accomplished author. And, toward the end, I found myself wanting to rush through the final chapters to find out how the man, Aldred, and his child-woman, Helen, would resolve their predicament; how, that is, would this man "rescue" this teenager from her doomed existence. I did feel a little uneasy -- I would even say "queasy" -- about this relationship. We live in an enlightened age of acceptance and tolerance, but this is a teenager we are talking about here. She's seventeen and he's thirty-three, not quite a dirty old man, but close (I kept picturing Ben Affleck with a British accent lusting after Britney Spears's baby sister). Here, the Australian girl is highly intelligent and well-read and is caring for her slowly dying brother, and her military man is a decorated war hero trying to gather material to write a book about the ravages of war in China and Japan, where he meets Helen in 1947. All of which helps us excuse the age-span problem.The girl's mean parents are not enlightened enough to see all this and they try to keep the would-be lovers apart. The parents are so career-obsessed they cannot seem to care much for their dying son or their daughter's happiness, which does qualify them as villains of sorts, but I kept siding with them on giving the youngun a chance to grow up and find a lover her own age. Although a couple of other smarmy characters show up in minor roles, the other concrete "villain" in this story seems to be New Zealand, which I have come to love, knowing it is the true-life Middle Earth in the Lord of the Ring movies; I kept wondering why Helen would be condemned if she had to live there. The true villains in this story are War and its partner, Time. The book is worth reading for this reason. World War II, that "inextinguishable conflagration," or, the great fire, has left much death and destruction, and events seem to present the threat of an even greater war, as new world alliances are formed. This is, after all, the start of the atomic age, and war survivors such as Aldred Leith and his friend, Peter Exley, are wondering why they bothered to survive: what is there to live for? For Aldred, that becomes Helen -- so we are inclined to forgive him for robbing the cradle. It is only a matter of time before war begins again. Therefore, live life to its fullest; that is the message: forget about Helen's age, live it up. But the story is also a matter of the possibility of Helen's wasting away in the ravages of time (if she stays in New Zealand without the man she loves). And he, Aldred, winds up back in England, from where it takes weeks and weeks to travel to that dreary land way down under. Again, time is the enemy. This book is literary, meaning keep your dictionary close, especially for Latinate prose words intended, I suppose, for any long dead Romans who might roll by a bookstore in their rusty chariots. It is also British, so a "lift" is an "elevator," and so on, expressions we Americans stumble on. Still, the language is rich and rewarding in description of time and place, not just in China and Japan, but in England, Italy, and somewhat in other places. But many times, I wondered when we were ever going to get back into the plot. It reads like a railroad with many spurs: it keeps getting off the main track. That is rewarding in terms of characterization, both people and places, but it is not for readers wanting linear progression. For example, near the end I was irritated at reading a whole chapter about Helen's visit with two old ladies, which, I suppose, was intended to heighten the reader's sense of wanting a better life for the young girl. A caveat on the fine writing: though this is a National Book Award winner (so what do I know?), I sometimes was irritated by what I judged to be an overuse of fragmented sentences, especially where pronouns were left out and verbs were used to start sentences. I became too conscious of the writing, instead of being able to follow the story without distraction. Throughout the book, I had a sense the author was writing about herself. So I found it interesting that Shirley Hazzard as a teenager was briefly employed by British Intelligence to "spy" on changes in China during the period covered in the book. And I found it revealing that her parents were career diplomats, forcing her to have to relocate often, including to New Zealand. And she married a writer. That puts a wink in there. Bottom Line: I loved this book, wrinkles and all.
Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated
Review: This is an ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful novel. The theme is the effort to recapture life after the chaos and destruction of WWII. The answer appears to be love, particularly a sort of very romanticized, relatively selfless form of romantic love. The primary character is a British writer in love with a teenage girl. His character is contrasted with a friend who is also searching for some authenticity in his life. The theme is certainly worthwhile.
Unfortunately, while Hazzard is certainly a skilful writer, her skills are deployed in a way that makes this book attractive. Her highly allusive prose has a generally flat quality and becomes monotonous despite her attempts to engage a variety of characters and situations. Her characters and not particularly engaging, a major defect in a novel with a large psychological component.
Rating: 
Summary: 100 Years from Now
Review: 3 1/2 stars? How Tragic. 100 years from now, people will read this book for an understanding of a underappreciated time in our world's history. While we are wracked by national self-doubt about the occupation of Iraq and our role in the world, Shirley Hazzard paints a tapestry of the foot soldiers making their way in a new time. Wrapped in a love story, her language is exquisite, and the Turner that is wrapped around her book an appropriate metaphor for the impressionist landscape she paints.
Rating:
Summary: my literary reaction
Review: In the penumbrous, shadowy twilight, reading, alone. I come upon this passage - page 107 paragraph 9. The phrase " Pattie's pusillanimous plait". Tentative fingers play upon winter-scorched lips. The book is flung across the room. Discarded. Alone.
Rating:
Summary: Quite Simply a Masterpiece.
Review: A poetic post-war novel that quite simply shows the modern day reader that masterpieces are still being written.
Rating:
Summary: Languid Afternoons
Review: The Great Fire is full of languid afternoons and young men beset by obscure diseases and weary from the war. I enjoyed the setting; the sense of war nearby, war recently ended and perhaps soon to be reignited. It was like a less bleary version of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises it also reminded me a lot of the film Casablanca, but maybe just because I happened to watch it around when I started reading the book. The book revolves around a couple of former soldiers, Aldred Leith and Peter Exley, who have been cast far and wide, to Japan and Hong Kong respectively, in the aftermath of World War II. They are surrounded on all sides by others, women and older folks, whose lives have been similarly touched by the war, and all of whom seem to be searching in vain for normalcy in the aftermath of shattering conflict. The central drama of the book concerns a budding love affair between Leith and a student of his, Helen Driscoll. Helen's dull and menacing parents as well as the vast age difference between Aldred and Helen set up what turns out to be a fairly filmic love story. The chief drama for the reader lies both in wending one's way through Hazzard's elliptical, lyrical prose and in wondering whether or not the May - December romance will ever be consummated.
Rating: 
Summary: dialogue
Review: I don't know what kind of social life Ms. Hazzard has but this book has the most stilted, ridiculous dialogue I have ever read in a novel. People just do not talk to each other like she has them. In addition, the characters Ben and Helen as presented are much too intelligent for their ages considering their backgrounds.
Rating:
Summary: A challenge just to finish
Review: I too, read the reviews and decided to give this one a shot. I enjoyed Hazzard's writing style, but the crawling story line was terribly dull and did not go very far. I could care less about the characters and their encounters throughout the book. The complete lack of drama was unengaging and disappointing, especially for a book set in the post World War II era.
Rating:
Summary: Totally pretentious
Review: WHAT A WASTE OF TIME! THIS IS THE MOST PRETENTIOUS PIECE OF DRIVE I HAVE READ IN MANY MONTHS. TWO BORING MEN WHO HAVE SURVIVED THE SECOND WORLD WAR.... ONE FALLS IN LOVE WITH A....17 YEAR OLD......WHO IS FROM A TOTALLY DEMENTED FAMILY. PLEEEEEASE...SPARE US. HOW DID SHE FIND AN EDITOR, NEVER MIND A PUBLISHER. SAVE YOUR MONEY.
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