The great fire

I wrote that author Shirley Hazards previous novel, The Transit of Venus, was a book “...about Love but not in the cloying way I should imagine a Mills and Boons Novel being.” This, The Great Fire, is not far removed from that statement. Where the former was for me about the “transient nature and the morality of (Love) as a weapon” this book is about Love as a power to transform after trauma, in this case the events in WW2 and family bereavement. The prose is exceptional and that is the strength of the novel as the plot is fairly thin. That has been what has surprised me in reading both of Hazards 2 novels. Surprise that I can be dragged into them when the subject would hardly be my choice generally. But in the end the skinny plot did not save me from marking down the book in a comparison with The Transit of Venus. That book is to reread to discover the hidden secrets and meanings. This one less so.
Winner of 2004 Miles Franklin Award and probably deservedly. Just not my kind of book.