First published in 1980, this is how it is described on the Virago website: "Caro, gallant and adventurous, is one of two Australian sisters who have come to post-war England to seek their fortunes. Courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice, she is to find that love brings passion, sorrow, betrayal and finally hope. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death and two slow-burning secrets wait in ambush for them."That's a pretty fair summing-up, but it's more complex than it sounds. There are so many nuances here, and no one is likable, not Caro or Grace - everyone is either too cold, callous and self-absorbed, or needy, or pitiful. Each character was stripped right down to their most horrible flaws, and it was all so very British! It reminded my of characters in the series House of Elliot, and the sisters struggle to live their own lives, as separate from other people who always "know better". And that British "keeping up appearances" isn't relegated to early last century, either - read John le Carre's The Constant Gardener and listen to the horrible characters of Sandy and the "top knobs" at the British embassy - fictional, yes, but still reflective. Characters like Christian, Grace's husband, are, to use what I think of as a British expression, "insufferable" to me: "Christian Thrale credited himself with special sensibilities towards pictures. In galleries where art had been safely institutionalized, he walked and paused like all the rest, yet believed his own stare more penetrating than most; and, when others strolled ahead, would linger, patently engrossed beyond the ordinary." (p.189) These characters are great to read, and great to despise. The men are so patriarchal as to be, inherently, misogynistic. Christian's affair with a secretary at work is another instance where his motivations and methods are stripped bare, honest, repugnant. But the women do not escape either - the only character with any spunk at all is one of Caro's co-workers at the government offices where she works as typist/secretary/tea-maker, a woman called Valda, who says to Caro: "You feel downright disloyal to your experience, when you do come across a man you could like. By then you scarcely see how you can decently make terms, it's like going over to the enemy. And then there's the waiting. Women have got to fight their way out of that dumb waiting at the end of the never-ringing telephone. The 'receiver', as our portion of it is called."And then: "There is the dressing up, the hair, the fingernails. The toes. And, after all that, you are a meal they eat while reading the newspaper. I tell you that every one of those fingers we paint is another nail in their eventual coffins." To which Caroline thinks, "All this was indisputable, even brave. But was a map, from which rooms, hours, and human faces did not rise; on which there was no bloom of generosity or discovery. The omissions might constitute life itself; unless the map was intended as a substitute for the journey." (pp. 142-143)Valda is obviously one of the first feminists, and also liberal-minded: she sews on her boss's button, her boss who is 'no good at these things', and later asks him to fix her typewriter ribbon, as she is 'no good at these things', to which he replies she should get another girl to do it, and must personally oversee this as Valda insists he do it. This book offers a great insight into the early-mid decades of the 20th century in all its grittiness and human foibles. Dora, Grace and Caro's older half-sister, is also "insufferable", though in the classic way: she is pessimistic, unlovable almost, for being totally self-absorbed in the most negative, vocal way. She is almost a comic character, an exaggeration, yet the way she is written you can only feel sorry for her and her lost life. Of Hazzard's writing, it has been described thus: "Hazzard is noted for the insight, sensitivity, and subtlety of her writing and for a lyrical style sometimes leavened by gentle irony." I would say, firstly, that it is dense, that there is so much to absorb in a single paragraph, which is why it took me so long to read. An example (and I open the book at random): "In secret Caro dwelt on the release from emotional obligation, and could see how indifference might become seductive. What Josie took for exposure on Caro's part had been an offering of trust - a test the girl had failed, over and over. Trust would be offered repeatedly, but not indefinitely." (p.209) There are passages of true poetry (to me): "Beside the chill drama of Paul's marriage, played out in its interesting setting of worldly success, Caro's wound must blanch to a light stroke of experience that it would be tiresome to display. Caro would be instructed, not questioned; would be addressed, with knowing interpolations: 'That alas is the way it goes'; 'Something we must rectify.' Paul, not Caro, would interpret the degree of meaning in their respective lots. That had been decided, as he sat speaking intimately of his life to the person most excluded from it - in order to readmit her to the intimacy though not the life." (p.133) There is an interesting passage towards the end, when Caro reflects on her life, having finally got rid of Paul's spectre after he tells her his big secret and what was forever persistent between them dies while at the same time she realises her love for dear old Ted, that is interesting and reminded me of Berkley's philosophy (I use the word lightly, as I think it's a crap idea based on a gross assumption). In the book: "Caro had walked in the streets and thought about Ted Tice. She had sat to her work and feared to die without seeing him again. One day she had written on the page where she was working: 'If he came now, I would do whatever he asked.' If Ted were to die, the world would be a room where no one looked at her." (p.324) It made me think back to first year philosophy (which I detested, but that is beside the point), and Berkley's hypothesis that things only exist insomuch or insofar as we are here to look at them, and that they continue to exist after we have turned our backs/left the room etc, because God is there to look, and is always looking. Hence do things "exist". That is my gross summing-up, of which I'm sure I've taken many liberties. I won't go into why it's such crap, as I would think that would be obvious to anyone, but with this idea at the back of my mind I interpreted the line about Caro not existing without Ted to look upon her as one that greatly summed up her character, and many other people in the world, who do not feel complete when alone, really, truly alone, or do not feel that they are a part of the world at all: alienated. What is that line from that silly song? "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow." Yes, everyone does, everyone needs to feel love, and feel loved. Or they take a gun to a school like Dawson College in Montreal and express themselves that way. I thought how sad Caro was, that she was so dependent, just like her sisters - but really, it's an ugly truth: we are all dependent on our own images and ideas of ourselves, more so than the ones others have of us, and to break away from the first sphere of our existence is to float adrift, with no purpose, no identity. Like Christian, who thinks so highly of himself and so can live with himself because he meets his own ideas of upper class (and there is a lot of emphasis on class in this book). Like Dora, who is tiresome, exhausting, depressing. But she has always been that way, and there is safety in it, and she exists. She is determined people not forget her, even if they are forced to recall her. This is a bleakly honest look at ordinary people living in an ordinary world, a love story in effect, but not a happy one, not really. There is so much here, to dissect, to discuss, I could not possibly encompass it all. And I will have to read it again, to really take it all in, but I'm not looking forward to it. Like a great foreign film or documentary, it's worth watching, but not fun.
I resisted this book at first. I wondered what Caro Bell (the character with the most page time) had to offer besides being an incongruous challenge for men to fall in love with; falling in love with her seemed to say something about their characters, but did little to illuminate hers. I also bristled at some of the prose. As with many elliptical and lyrical prose writers, Hazzard's overreaching imagery coexisted--sometimes awkwardly-- with searingly beautiful turns of phrase.I was miffed. I also kept reading. And opened the book on my lunch hour. On the bus. Late at night. Early on a Sunday morning.I was surprised in the best way, the way I remember being surprised by Anna Karenina long ago, in that characters who had originally seemed outside of the central drama, writ large, were illuminated with the same inquisitive brush as the ostensible central figure of mystery. Love was walked into like sudden, perilous games of cards. All or nothing. The highest of stakes. In the end, I had the most sympathy for those that had originally seemed the least interesting. I saw myself in them. The perilous love endured, this time the way a bus lumbers past every hour or so, and everyone notes it and thinks, "Yup. Still running."Meanwhile, the England of the setting is modernizing. Women are working in offices. Caro Bell never ages and wears delightful scarves at all times.And, then--one of the best and most finely-executed plot twists I have ever encountered in a work of fiction. To say more would give something away. But wow. Characters are unmasked; all is not as it has seemed.Four stars: earned with grit and gristle.
What do You think about The Transit Of Venus (2006)?
This is one of the most perfectly constructed novels that I've ever read. Twice in the opening pages, there are simple sentences that foreshadow all that comes after. All is not revealed until much later, and until that time, you will worry those apparent loose ends as you would an irritating pebble in your shoe, but never fear, Hazzard knows precisely what she's about. And the end, ah, the end. Against all the evidence, even this (view spoiler)[ "For the last time,Caroline Vail lay in a bed alone (hide spoiler)]
—Elaine
There seem to be two camps about this book. People either love it or hate it. I thought the author's use of language was generally 'too much.' She tones it down after the first 50 pages (perhaps the effort of keeping up that flowery pace was too much for her too), so if you are one of those people who hate it, you might give it at least the first 60 pages to see how it goes... I didn't care for the story and I felt that she handed me a lot of detail that I didn't need to accomplish the story. This caused me to start skimming and soon I realized that I was skimming parts that wound up being actually important. This is why it's so irritating when an author tells you a bunch of stuff you don't actually need to know. Imagine that reading a book is like climbing a mountain, the resolution of which is reaching the top. If the author hands me a volkswagon toward the beginning and expects me to haul it all the way up there, it had better be important... And not get in the way of the minivan that she gives me at the end of chapter 4 that I also have to haul.
—Shaunnatonelli
Like Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, I bought this on the basis of a Bryan Appleyard article where he mentioned Hazzard as one of his contenders for greatest living novelist; in fact, he entertained the possibility that The Transit of Venus was 'the most perfect novel written in the past 100 years'.I was less taken by this one than the Robinson. Don't get me wrong, it's a seriously good novel: lots of good characters, a great sense of time and place, a rich and engaging plot. And occasionally it's very funny; there's a vein of acid social satire running through it which just helps give it a bit of an edge. There's an account of the changing reputation of a poet over his career which is absolutely superb, for example.And yet... it never quite wowed me as much as Housekeeping. That novel, for me, had a touch of magic and uniqueness to it that made it really stand out. ToV by comparison seems ordinary. A very good example of a conventional novel, but conventional nonetheless. It didn't help that I never quite settled with the prose style. It has a kind of staccato portentousness that, even after a couple of hundred pages, still kept niggling slightly.If I sound rather negative, it's only relative to the claim that the book is the most perfect of the past 100 years; it's a good book, I'm glad I read it, and I'd generally recommend it. But for whatever reason of personal taste or mood, it didn't blow me away. Shrug.
—Harry Rutherford
