The Transit of Venus

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.

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“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.”

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“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.”