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The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics)
 
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The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics) (Paperback)

by Shirley Hazzard (Author)
2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics) + The Great Fire + Housekeeping
Price For All Three: £16.77

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  • This item: The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics) by Shirley Hazzard

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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (3 Jun 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860491812
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860491818
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 27,302 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > H > Hazzard, Shirley

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Product Description

Review
'A wonderfully mysterious book ... Both plot and characters are many layered. Unforgettably rich' ANNE TYLER 'A dose of the sublime .. I read it with an almost indescribable pleasure. There were sentences that brought tears of gratification to my eyes' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

New York Times Book Review
'A dose of the sublime .. I read it with an almost indescribable pleasure...'

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics)
84% buy the item featured on this page:
The Transit of Venus (Virago Modern Classics) 2.6 out of 5 stars (5)
£5.99
The Great Fire
5% buy
The Great Fire 3.7 out of 5 stars (11)
£5.99
Gilead
4% buy
Gilead 3.7 out of 5 stars (46)
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Housekeeping
4% buy
Housekeeping 4.5 out of 5 stars (10)
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Star-crossed Lovers, 11 Jun 2007
By Al (UK) - See all my reviews
I first read this book almost twenty years ago when I was living abroad and found it's depiction of patrician British life unbearably but beautifully nostalgic. Coming back to it, older and wiser, I found in it a heartbreaking tale of missed opportunity and unexpressed, unrealised love.
This a novel for grown-ups who have weathered a few heartaches; it has something of the Japanese concept of 'wabi'- the beauty of the melancholy in transient things.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant but bossy author gets in the way of her own story, 29 Jan 2008
I am an avid reader of all sorts of fiction, and rarely give up on a book. But just a few pages into the first chapter of The Transit of Venus, I had to put this one down and take a breather. I picked it up again, full of hope (I had read the glowing tributes, including one by Michael Cunningham, who says Hazzard is "purely and simply, one of the greatest writers working in English today"). But by the third chapter I still didn't care about any of the characters or what was going to happen to them.

In what I did read, Hazzard's brilliant writing was very much in evidence. In fact, there was so much authorial brilliance, it got in the way of the characters and the story. As I turned the pages I found myself hoping for a little private time with the characters before the author elbowed them aside and started gossiping in my ear again. I was also puzzled that Hazzard's editor had allowed several completely incomprehensible paragraphs through to the final publication.

Having said all of that, I would like very much to like Hazzard's writing. The next time I attempt one of her books, I'll aim for her collection of short stories. After that I'll try The Great Fire, but I'll borrow a copy before I buy one to keep.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and infuriating; needs more than one reading, 13 Feb 2008
By S. B. Kelly (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Hazzard has a unique prose style, often beautiful and lyrical, but it stands like a wall between her readers and her characters. There were sentences -- not necessarily long or complicated ones, either -- which I read half a dozen times without getting any sense from them. And am I the only person who didn't understand the ending at all?

The two sisters at the centre of the story are Australian, or so we are told, because I got no sense of them as outsiders in post-war Britain. Every time their Australian-ness was mentioned, it brought me up short because I'd forgotten all about it. Hazzard seems to have led a nomadic life, living in many continents, and maybe she has lost all notion of what makes individual nations unique, which might explain why British characters use so many American idioms -- surely not common in the 1950s.

When I got to the baffling ending, I realised that, at some point, I was going to have to read it again. I'm afraid my heart sank rather at the prospect. It will not be soon.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars A Novel for Crossword Enthusiasts
I also read an article by Michael Cunningham raving about Shirley Hazzard in general and this book in particular. I hated it. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Celt

3.0 out of 5 stars Transit of Venus- an exercise in the arcane
Shirley Hazzard's prose is amazingly, if somehow incoherently ,lucid. She reminds of the poetry by Craig Raine the Martianist( `A Martian Sends a Postcard Home'), who never calls... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Veronica Aldous

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