The Transit of Venus

Shirley Hazzard's writing style really floored me. It is playful, wry, elegant, concise and full of emotions. Each sentence seems to be carefully constructed, each sentence could be THE artful sentence in another book. And put together, they are not intellectual and highbrow as one might expect, but hold this strange magic and a timeless quality. It takes a bit to get into, and one has to slow down, but it's so rewarding, cherishing those lines.

My favourite thing might have been her unfinished sentences. Sentences where everyone already knows where the plot is going, so she just drops them mid sentence. She doesn't do it often enough to become repetitive, just so perfectly sporadic that every time I stumbled over one, I was delighted by the cleverness.

I'll say the writing tops the plot, even though I enjoyed my time with Caroline and Grace, their entertaining aunt Dora (who's self-pity could come straight from a Jane Austen novel), and the men around them.

I had wanted to read this book ever since I read Anatole Broyard's praise of it in Intoxicated by My Illness which I read for a class a few years ago. My expectations were high, and the first third of it especially fulfilled those expectations, and slowly sloped downward to the end. Part I, especially, “The Old World”, is full of what sounds silly to say but regardless is in fact exquisite prose. I don't usually go in for exquisite prose, but Hazzard did it for me. Hazzard's style is just off-kilter enough to seem fresh (she drops the subject in multi-clause sentences and drops the last word of cliched phrases) and to keep my reading pace slow. It was strangely exhausting to read, to see so far into the depths of the characters she explores, one or two at a time, and then to see further into them again later when secrets are revealed, where I didn't expect to find secrets.

—

“When Sefton Thrale said the word ‘global' you felt the earth to be round as a smooth ball, or white and bland as an egg. And had to remind yourself of the healthy and dreadful shafts and outcroppings of this world. You had to think of the Alps, or the ocean, or a live volcano to set your mind at rest.”

—

“Charmian Thrale's own reclusive self, by now quite free of yearnings, merely cherished a few pure secrets .... She did not choose to have many thoughts her husband could not divine, for fear she might come to despise him. Listening had been a large measure of her life: she listened closely–and, since people are accustomed to being half-heard, her attention troubled them, they felt the inadequacy of what they said. In this way she had a quieting effect on those about her, and stemmed gently the world's flow of unconsidered speech.”

—

“He found these women uncommonly self-possessed for their situation. They seemed scarcely conscious of being Australians in a furnished flat. He would have liked them to be more impressed by his having come, and instead caught himself living up to what he thought might be their standards and hoping they would not guess the effort incurred. ...

“The room itself appeared unawed by him–not from any disorder but from very naturalness. A room where there had been expectation would have conveyed the fact–by a tension of plumped cushions and placed magazines, a vacancy from unseemly objects bundled out of sight; by suspense slowly dwindling in the curtains. This room was quite without such anxiety. On its upholstery, the nap of the usual was undisturbed. No tribute of preparation had been paid him here, unless perhaps the flowers, which were fresh and which he himself if he had only thought.”

I read this having heard great reviews and, on the day I started, anticipated sinking back into my couch and reading as much as possible in one sitting. I spent hours reading a handful of pages, taking a break, going back to the book, taking another break, and found myself making a very small dent by the end of the day.

150 pages in, I started falling into the plot but Hazzard's interesting sentence structure and descriptions kept me from quickly blasting through the book. I went on vacation for a month and left the book at home (library copy and I only wanted to bring books I could leave at various destinations). When I came back, I decided to start again and realized I had missed a third of what was going on in those first 150 pages.

The writing in this book is impeccable, the plot is great and this is easily now one of my absolute favorites. It's not an easy read, but this is definitely the type of book someone could re-read every year or two. Highly recommend.