The Great Fire - Shirley Hazzard (2003)

 

Rating: Excellent

Shirley Hazzard’s great achievement, The Transit of Venus (1980), is one of my all-time favourite novels and counts as one of the few books I’ve awarded a sublime rating to on this blog. The Great Fire became Hazzard’s last published novel some twenty-three years later and won the Miles Franklin Award. Set in the aftermath of WWII, The Great Fire explores the lives of a handful of protagonists who are finding their way in a world recovering from the catastrophe of war and its impact on them as individuals. Major Aldred Leith, a decorated and injured (but recovered) war veteran with a complicated back-story is in Japan, writing a book on the war’s aftermath, where he is billeted with an Australian family that includes a brother and sister, Benedict and Helen. While Benedict is terminally ill with a wasting disease, Helen shines as his loving sister and becomes connected to Leith by a deep mutual love. Of course, the world Hazzard vividly evokes with her splendid prose is both tragic and nebulous, proving to be an unfavourable environment for such love to blossom. The Great Fire finds its protagonists in a period of abeyance as they try and find their way toward peacetime lives. Leith’s wartime friend, Peter Exley, is investigating Axis war crimes and their lives intertwine for a time before post-war circumstances take them in different directions. Although the novel is essentially a post-war narrative, it is chiefly preoccupied with the characters personal lives, rather than military, political or historical machinations.

Shirley Hazzard, never to be repeated

As with The Transit of Venus, Hazzard’s thematic thrust involves love in the face of everything that can thwart its chances. Leith and Helen’s love is plagued by both tragic and practical barriers, no less Helen’s eventual journey away from Leith to Australia and then New Zealand, the literal end of the earth from Europe. The novel also explores the notion, without spelling it out, that despite the horrors of war and its disfiguring effects on the human soul, humanity can still display the redeeming characteristics of civilisation: literature, art, empathy, intelligence and most of all, love. Hazzard’s prose is exquisitely beautiful and mannered, bordering on the pretentious, featuring occasional grammatical rule bending, with capital letters in the wrong places and sudden jumps in setting. More accurately, Hazzard’s prose style comes across as an analogue of William Morris’s gorgeous textile designs from the nineteenth century; ornate and intricate, with splendid flourishes of colour.  Although I didn’t quite enjoy The Great Fire as much as The Transit of Venus, it is a wonderful jewel-like novel that requires concentration and care to fully absorb. They literally don’t write novels like this anymore; Hazzard, already ten years gone, can be remembered as a great Australian writer from another age, never to be repeated.

William Morris provides a visual representation 

Caledonian Road - Andrew O'Hagan (2024)

 

Rating: Sublime

Caledonian Road is the product of a decade’s worth of work by Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan. It was definitely worth the effort on his part, the novel is a brilliant display of modern realism with complex themes and an array of engaging characters. The novel is, essentially, an embodiment of our times as seen through the prism of London and its strata of society, from the aristocracy, Russian oligarchs, academics, politicians, journalists, actors, scenesters, gang members, people smugglers and Dickensian crones (well, one Dickensian crone). Containing over sixty characters, the novel centres around art historian and cultural theorist, Campbell Flynn. Flynn has emerged from working class circumstances (his parents steal the silverware when on holiday) to become a feted cultural commentator, a scion of the aristocracy via marriage and the author of a new book that he hopes will make him a great deal of money – Why Men Weep in Their Cars. I laughed out loud at this book title, a brilliant stroke of satire, in such a manner that people on the train looked up from their phones in a startled fashion. Such delightful displays of satire are featured throughout Caledonian Road; not only is the novel a very serious examination of our dysfunctional times, but it is also very funny indeed, featuring humour so dry that drought-stricken Europe comes to mind. Just as well because there’s no getting away from the heavy thematic thrust: the tragedy of generational inequality, the narcissistic entitlement of the younger generations, the misogyny of the older generations facing up to our era of cancel culture and the exploitation of illegal immigrants.

O'Hagan and his insightful literary gaze

O’Hagan delivers Caledonian Road’s dark thematic undertow with such verve and aplomb that any misgivings regarding its size (over 600 pages) and narrative density fades away. The novel features some brilliantly insightful and erudite writing, and it is a total pleasure to be immersed in such a rich and fully realised world. Another strength is how O’Hagan brings to life even the most minor characters, such as the lorry drivers who move the illegal immigrants, giving them a life story with hopes and dreams. Of course, the major players are all brilliantly rendered, in particular Anthony, Duke of Kendal, nickname ‘Snaffles’, who crops up everywhere; with one particular interaction with Flynn being a highlight – “He emitted ghastly opinions from a mouth filled with distressed teeth. Seeing his face and the crimson faces of all his friends, as well as the pinkly depraved ancestors looking from his pictures, made you want to set fire to it all and go home.” Flynn has his own journey to endure, one that only becomes fully evident right at the novel’s startling dénouement. Of all the novel's characters, Flynn represents the hollow man at the heart of our times, undone by his outward gaze that keeps him from any having significant self awareness. Caledonian Road is a deeply cultural, political, sociological and psychological narrative that brilliantly encapsulates our times and will no doubt go down as one of the great novels of this particular decade. Thoroughly recommended for those who love their literary fiction to be a rich tapestry of insight, ideas and detail.