The Transit of Venus

I share some of the criticisms of "Transit of Venus" voiced by others but I stuck through to the end and felt my patience was rewarded. I was truly surprised by the climax and the closing scene, which led me to reassess the entire book. I still have some reservations but generally admire the compassion and intelligence behind this finely crafted novel by Shirley Hazzard.I agree with others that the dialogue is cryptic and weighed down by too many obscure literary allusions. Whole conversations are conducted through metaphorical references to poetry or antiquity. It seemed overwritten and pretentious at times. A good editor should have reined that in. My bigger disappointment was with the passivity of the primary character, Caroline. I realize that she's our Venus stand-in, buffeted by love, but she was hard to get to know. Orphaned, adrift and with few friends, she only sparks when a man enters or re-enters her life. In many scenes, she's monosyllabic, uttering "Yes" or "No" as other characters - especially the men - expound at length. To the extent the author meant this as a critique of power relations between the sexes, it makes sense. Caroline's lack of agency reminded me of some of Edith Wharton's women who are trapped or defeated by forces beyond their control. Also like Wharton, Hazzard writes of her characters with detachment, which makes them hard to warm up to.Among the things I enjoyed about "Transit of Venus" was its careful plotting. It covers three decades in the lives of multiple characters, which includes some lulls in action (like real life), but it heads toward a dramatic conclusion. Ironies abound and there is some sharp humor, including withering depictions of bosses and bureaucrats. In the end what stayed with me was its broad canvas of lives lived, love won and lost, the complicated trajectories of people's journeys. Its examination of relationships, whether exploitive, unrequited, ephemeral or enduring, whether parent-child, sibling or sexual, is rich and thought-provoking. It explores goodness and venality, love and death, lust, abandonment, idealism, deception, regret, infidelity and fate. So despite stylistic flaws, "The Transit of Venus" left me with much to ponder.

"The Transit of Venus" is an extraordinary piece of modern literature. Hazzard has a special talent for combining words on a page. This talent is truly and uniquely illustrated here. Her similes and metaphors, her adjectives and adverbs, her incisive psychological look at the characters inner thought processes and pattern are all here beautifully put together.In this wonderful novel, Hazzard follows the love life, non-love life, adultery and non-adultery to illustrate the depth of human emotion. Using world traveling characters, the book takes place all over the world, but mostly in England and the United States. Hazzard is at her finest in some of her descriptive narrative about people's appearances and the physical realities, both beautiful and ugly, in the world about her characters.With painstaking excellence, the lives of the two girls are illustrated. There marriages; various deceits and betrayals; various divorces and continuations, the pace and thoughts of the ladies' encounters and interactions are elucidated. Hazzard makes these two ladies a huge metaphor for love and dislove. And yet, her focus surely is on love. The many forms it takes are sketched out by Hazzard like a Renoir.The book is highly recommended for those looking to read great Modern Literature. Hazzard starts to reach her peak in this book, and only exceeds it in her most recent novel, "The Great Fire." Those who wish to understand just a little better the phases of women's changing emotional patterns would be most enlightened by this work.

The first seventy or so pages of this book are difficult to get through. The first couple pages begin to set the scene, and then those characters which have been introduced are delved into by way of flashbacks for a solid sixty or so pages. The story was not grounded enough in the present for me to appreciate the past, and I was left off balance for the first fifth of the book. By the time I finished all the flashbacks, I had forgotten about the present-day characters, and returning to real-time narration was both a shock and a relief. The extended flashback period precludes understanding of what type of story is being told, and left me off balance. I found I could not read more than twenty or thirty pages at once, losing interest frequently, and did not understand the point of the section. At this point also, I found the style inappropriate. It is written in mimicry of Dickens and his contemporaries, but does not quite achieve the feeling they cultivate due to construction. Mark Twain spoke of this effect in language: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." Here as a reader I am both conscious of what is being attempted, and the failure to achieve it. The expectation of the lighting against the reality of the lightning bug. The first fifth of this book is frustrating as it fails to give any expectation for the story besides disappointment.After that, the story really takes off. The just-missed feeling becomes an apt use of old-style writing. The almost is gone, and reading is pleasant on a sentence and section level, as well as that of the word. The characters' relationships weave together in unexpected and complimentary ways. Caro comes out as the definite focus of the novel, and she is a worthy character to follow. In this, too, the styles of yesteryear are cultivated with the good, strong, and long suffering female protagonist. The main set of characters each receive a chapter or section devoted to exploring their humanity, and inner strength or lack thereof. All are complex and well shown, and the order in which each moment is given serves to cast starker light on the relative failures and virtues or those portrayed. All of this is very well done.At the end, Caro's emotions are not believable--they develop too quickly. More should have been done to lead up to her feelings, or bring them out slowly. Now I complain that not enough time was given: only a few pages.This story was excruciatingly slow to start, and too quick to finish, but sandwiched in between is a very rewarding read. I rate this book 5/10.

A friend recommended a highly praised but somewhat hard-to-find book. I bought the book used and received it quickly and in very good condition, just as described. I wouldn't hesitate to purchase another item from this source.

The Transit of Venus is a mammoth work, a literary feat. It is regarded as one of the best 100 novels by some. I’m afraid I’m not among them. I was one hundred pages into the book and still didn’t know what it was all about or even who the central character is. Two hundred pages later I can tell you she is called Caro, Caroline Bell, Mrs. Vail. But that’s about it. This novel is a family saga that involves three generations over a span of at least seventy years. More than four families are involved. The author crams it all into 338 pages by telling us what is happening and hardly showing us anything at all. (The rule is show don’t tell, remember.) Add that to the omniscient viewpoint so we are told what characters are thinking and feeling. They show no emotion at all, and so remain remote and hardly very interesting. These techniques allow the author to cover a huge amount of ground, but the effect for me became like reading a newspaper. When the characters do speak for themselves they use endless clichés, but that is because they are indeed very boring and pompous civil servants, who sleep with their secretaries. Why we would want to know this is anybody’s guess as nothing comes of these random infidelities. But these are minor characters and irrelevant to the main plot which involves Caro and a playwright who seduces her while engaged to another. Caro feels no emotion as far as we can tell but we are told her heart is broken. So she sleeps with the Major who was sleeping with the fiancé and then marries Mr. Vail. But who cares? The one-eyed astronomer, apparently, who we met right at the beginning and then lost track of. Caro and her sister and sometimes her lovers have rare conversations that are a string of pompous platitudes and quasi-philosophical observations punctuated by awful puns.Well, I hope that doesn’t put you off because you may be the one who loves this book and rates it in the top one hundred.

all as advertised and promised

One of the finest books I've read in recent years and elder sister, Caro, is one of the most compelling female characters ever; up there in the Bovary class.Can't understand why Shirley Hazzard isn't as celebrated in the UK as Shields, Atwood and others.

The media could not be loaded.  It lacks a first chapter!

It could be said that a book in which every sentence contains a double meaning is incredibly clever and witty or equally viable is that such writing obfuscates a story's deeper meaning, mirroring the contrariness of Hazzard's thoughts. Perhaps it is worthwhile to read this book word for word in its entirety to appreciate and savour meaningful metaphors and phrases that frequently confound the reader with 'the doublement of phrase' {PAGE 208] or the reader could concisely consider Ted Tice's twice told statement," I never had, or wished for, power over you. That isn't true of course. I wanted the greatest power of all. But not advantage or authority." I read the whole book through but wish that I had quickly found that phrase to know that it was both the beginning and the end of the path the author takes us to travel.