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The Great Fire (Hardcover)

by Shirley Hazzard (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; First Edition edition (6 Nov 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860498906
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860498909
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.6 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 752,232 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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

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Product Description

Review

Set in China, Japan, England and New Zealand this wide ranging novel deals with big issues through the medium of a central love story. Aldred Leith, researching conditions in Occupied Japan and early Maoist China in 1947/8 is thrown together with other Westerners on the move. Hazzard evokes character beautifully, interspersing dialogue with unspoken thoughts so that the reader is quickly able to understand histories and hang-ups. The spare, elegant and sometimes surprising language is very effective in creating scenes and throwing up parallels. For not only are the nationals of these countries very obviously affected by the horrors of war, the English and Antipodeans are similarly traumatised. Leith has a war wound and a medal and a heroic reputation. Helen, his teenage love, has dedicated her life to her dying brother. Other characters confront death and disability. In Hong Kong or Norfolk, Leith finds war damage in his journey towards love. Not until the final pages of this compelling novel do we learn whether we are reading tragedy or romance. This fine work has an assured place in the canon of contemporary literature. (Kirkus UK)


Helen Rumbelow, The Times

‘this is a book with a mature, complex voice’
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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Orange shortlisted and stunning., 11 Jun 2004
By A. Weston "Adrian Weston" (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Great Fire (Paperback)
The Great Fire was one of the less-talked about of the Orange Prize shortlist, which seems a little unfair.

Shirley Hazzard is one of those incredible novelists who has produced a minute body of work over a forty year period, but has to be one of the most significant writers alive. The Great Fire is an odd love story, one which handled differently could be an inappropriate love story: that of a 33 year old man for a 17 year old girl. But Hazzard manages to make it plausible, painful and beautiful and most of all understandable. In the convulsions of the immediate post war world her characters are all beached to some degree by the awfulness of it. Others have written of this kind of bitter enduring after trauma, loss, agony, but few so powerfully or precisely. I have to say I was surprised that she has pulled off a happy ending in this lyrically sad world - though not for all of her characters.

Of the many things that impress about Hazzard it is her understatedness that has the greatest impact. I have always admired her work and twenty-three years is a long wait between novels, but I can only assume that those twenty-three years have been spent ensuring that not one single word is wasted or misused. It is pin-point perfect throughout. The endorsements on the book's back cover are from great writers, writers I read and admire, but they are all pale in comparison to Shirley Hazzard's massive talent. Let it inspire you to find her other books as well.

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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A cataclysm of love and longing after war, 13 Jan 2004
By A. Weston "Adrian Weston" (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Shirley Hazzard is one of those incredible novelists who has produced a minute body of work over a forty year period, but has to be one of the most significant writers alive. The Great Fire is an odd love story, one which handled differently could be an inappropriate love story: that of a 33 year old man for a 17 year old girl. But Hazzard manages to make it plausible, painful and beautiful and most of all understandable. In the convulsions of the immediate post war world her characters are all beached to some degree by the awfulness of it. Others have written of this kind of bitter enduring after trauma, loss, agony, but few so powerfully or precisely. I have to say I was surprised that she has pulled off a happy ending in this lyrically sad world - though not for all of her characters.

Of the many things that impress about Hazzard it is her understatedness that has the greatest impact. I have always admired her work and twenty-three years is a long wait between novels, but I can only assume that those twenty-three years have been spent ensuring that not one single word is wasted or misused. It is pin-point perfect throughout. The endorsements on the book's back cover are from great writers, writers I read and admire, but they are all pale in comparison to Shirley Hazzard's massive talent. Let it inspire you to find her other books as well.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Simply unengaging, 19 Aug 2005
This review is from: The Great Fire (Paperback)
As I began this novel my instincts were that I struggle to "gel" with the narrative and engage with the story. But i persisted... My instinct was right. I failed to engage with the story at any level and I simply didn't care about what happened to the characters. I didn't dislike them, I didn't dislike the story, I just found it exceptionally uninspiring and ever so slightly dull. I haven't been put off reading other Hazzard novels. However, I found this particular novel a very unsatisfying read
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for the want of trying
I had read all the fantastic reviews and plaudits this book gained. I have had people I trust recommend the book to me, and consequently I was as keen as mustard to give it a go... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

5.0 out of 5 stars Superbly crafted writing
This is one of the very best and most lyrical books I have ever read. The writing is polished and spare, every word counts, and the prose is poetic, and can only be compared with... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Woodpecker

5.0 out of 5 stars From the cover..........
The Great Fire is Shirley Hazzard's first novel since The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1981. Read more
Published on 13 Feb 2007 by Angel Silver

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Moving
Shirley Hazzard is a writer's writer; often her prose is designed to appeal only to those literati that understand her references. Not so with the Great Fire. Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2006 by Andrew Vermes

4.0 out of 5 stars Well I liked it...!
I haven't read any Hazzard before so cannot compare it to any other work - but that's not the point really. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2006

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment
After reading the glowing blurbs on the back cover, I was expecting to be really engrossed. It never happened. Read more
Published on 8 Mar 2006 by Saul Rosenthal

2.0 out of 5 stars Dreary and stilted
This is no Transit of Venus. The Great Fire never gets off the ground, not only because the plot is tied to the protagonist's not especially moving love for a teenager who speaks... Read more
Published on 22 May 2005

2.0 out of 5 stars Unengaging
I read this after receiving a recommendation from a trusted fellow voracious reader who said that it was one of the best books she'd ever read. Read more
Published on 6 May 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Prose that sings to your soul
Shirley Hazard's The Great Fire is like Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces - a rare work of such startlingly luminous prose and such deep humanity, that one can't help thinking about... Read more
Published on 21 Oct 2004 by worthington_p

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