Rating: 
Summary: The Naked Emperor
Review: The illustation on the jacket of the novel reproduces J.M. Turner's famous painting, "The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons," a conflagration that threatened a civilization based on law. Its counterpart in the novel is World War II and the fiery destruction of Hiroshima. This straightforward comparison is the only obvious thing about this novel, which makes for a difficult read. There are certain books that however beautifully written, do not amount to the sum of their parts. Hazzard gives us a gorgeously robed empoeror, or so it seems, but the question is if his robes are what they seem, or if they are made of air.
The novel opens with the arrival in Japan of Aldred Leith, a hero with a background the details of which we learn only in time, and even then indirectly, through what other characters say and how they react to him. Divorced, traumatized by the war, he is in Japan to study the impact on the survivors of Hiroshima. Right away, he meets Benedict and Helen Driscoll, the brilliant, young--twenty and seventeen--son and daughter of an impossible Austalian couple with whom Leith is billeted. Benedict is dying of a degenerative disease and soon Helen will be left alone, loveless, and at the mercy of her awful parents.
Helen and Leith fall in love, and the novel is the story of their overcoming of the odds that confront them in the shape of their age difference, the antagonism of Helen's parents, and a world in despair, still devastated by war. Few of the characters know what they want or how they will get it when they do know; everyone is passive, suspended, demoralized by the effects of the great fire, the war. Leith returns to England, Helen is taken to Australia by her parents, Benedict is dying alone in California. When the lovers finally take the initiative and come together, Leith having traveled to Australia to rescue Helen from exile, Helen having rebelled against her parents, he thinks to himself, "Many have died. But not she, not he; not yet."
This is, in fact, the last line of the novel, and it is the most direct statement of what Hazzard is up to in a narrative that works almost entirely by understatement and indirection. Beautifully written, it is nonetheless a frustrating book to read, perhaps because the portentousness and weightiness of the prose lead the reader to expect more than Hazzard gives. At the heart of the difficulty is the central love affair. The attraction between Leith and Helen is first sparked by their mutual love of literature and Helen's appreciation of Leith's kindness to her dying brother. She falls in love with his love for Benedict--almost, at least according to Othello, Desdemona loves him first for "the dangers I had pass'd / And I lov'd her that she did pity them." Indeed, there is a Shakespearean quality to Helen, who sometimes resembles the youthful heroines of the comedies, Rosalind in As You Like It, for instance, or Viola in Twelfth Night.
But ultimately, as with any fictional relationship, the reader has to accept this unlikely pair, and therein lies the rub for those who cannot, of which I am one. In the end then, although I found myself constantly rereading paragraphs simply to savor the beauty of Hazzard's prose, I decided the emperor was naked.
Rating: 
Summary: A Labor of Love, from both author and reader - and worth it!
Review: One expected the long awaited novel from Shirley Hazzard to meet with adulation. Hazzard enjoys the reputation of writing award winning books over a considerable period of time. She also is her own person and defies classification as a novelist, so unique is her style. THE GREAT FIRE was twenty years in the writing and reading it reveals why that is so. Hazzard writes with thick, pungent, fragmented prose. Her manner is one of revealing bits and pieces of a story in non-linear fashion: at times within one page she has covered several decades of reference without even a demarcation of a paragraph or inserted space. This technique demands total concentration from the reader and at least with this reader requires retrograde reading, reviewing previous paragraphs and sentences to assure that the story is intact!And of course it is. Any time spent re-reading Hazzard's luminous prose is time twice blessed. Few other authors can bathe in phrases so articulate and wise that not only are they descriptive and additive, but they also can be read as isolated poems. "Our pleasures. He and I have killed, hand to hand, and have absorbed it. Can recall it, incredulous. Our pleasures were never taken that way, as by some in battle. Once, after a skirmish in the desert, a fellow officer whom he had never considered vicious had remarked. 'A man who hasn't killed is incomplete, analogous to a woman who has never given birth.' Embracing the primitive; even gratified." The story: "The Great Fire" references the global devastation of WW II with particular empahsis on the nuclear attack on Japan. The year is 1947 and the characters are two men forever bonded by their experiences in battle. One is writing a book on the effects of the war on Asia and the other is trying Japanese war criminals. The lives tie and untie in the most fascinating ways. There is a family spilt asunder by the times - a brother and sister cling together, he with a degenerative nerve disease, she with the commitment to caring for him. There is a love story; no, there are love stories, and each fragment of story unveils the damage inflicted upon bodies and souls by a War without equal. Hazzard captures the post-war fallout that has become all too familiar in the past century as well as the present one. And it is this weaving together of disparate souls in a tapestry of fire and smoke and eventual vacuum that is the driving force of this novel. Romance has never been written so bittersweet. "As she walked, she put her hand to her mouth to hold his kiss, and to her breast to enclose his touch. The man, instead went to his own room and to his table - to those papers where the ruined continents and cultures and existences that had consumed his mind and his body for years had given place to her story and his. He could not consider this a reduction - the one theme having embroiled the century and the world, and the other recasting his single fleeting miraculous life. Having expected, repeatedly, to die from the great fires into which his times had pitched him, he had discovered a desire to live completely; by which he meant, with her." No, this is not a novel for a quick read on a plane or to keep in the car for unexpected delays. This is a rare gem that deserves full attention. The rewards are inestimable. Think Virginia Woolf. Think Reliquary.
Rating:
Summary: Quite Simply a Masterpiece.
Review: A poetic post-war novel that quite simply shows the modern day reader that masterpieces are still being written.
Rating:
Summary: 100 Years from Now
Review: 3 1/2 stars? How Tragic. 100 years from now, people will read this book for an understanding of a underappreciated time in our world's history. While we are wracked by national self-doubt about the occupation of Iraq and our role in the world, Shirley Hazzard paints a tapestry of the foot soldiers making their way in a new time. Wrapped in a love story, her language is exquisite, and the Turner that is wrapped around her book an appropriate metaphor for the impressionist landscape she paints.
Rating: 
Summary: my literary reaction
Review: In the penumbrous, shadowy twilight, reading, alone. I come upon this passage - page 107 paragraph 9. The phrase " Pattie's pusillanimous plait". Tentative fingers play upon winter-scorched lips. The book is flung across the room. Discarded. Alone.
Rating: 
Summary: Languid Afternoons
Review: The Great Fire is full of languid afternoons and young men beset by obscure diseases and weary from the war. I enjoyed the setting; the sense of war nearby, war recently ended and perhaps soon to be reignited. It was like a less bleary version of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises it also reminded me a lot of the film Casablanca, but maybe just because I happened to watch it around when I started reading the book. The book revolves around a couple of former soldiers, Aldred Leith and Peter Exley, who have been cast far and wide, to Japan and Hong Kong respectively, in the aftermath of World War II. They are surrounded on all sides by others, women and older folks, whose lives have been similarly touched by the war, and all of whom seem to be searching in vain for normalcy in the aftermath of shattering conflict. The central drama of the book concerns a budding love affair between Leith and a student of his, Helen Driscoll. Helen's dull and menacing parents as well as the vast age difference between Aldred and Helen set up what turns out to be a fairly filmic love story. The chief drama for the reader lies both in wending one's way through Hazzard's elliptical, lyrical prose and in wondering whether or not the May - December romance will ever be consummated.
Rating: 
Summary: dialogue
Review: I don't know what kind of social life Ms. Hazzard has but this book has the most stilted, ridiculous dialogue I have ever read in a novel. People just do not talk to each other like she has them. In addition, the characters Ben and Helen as presented are much too intelligent for their ages considering their backgrounds.
Rating:
Summary: A challenge just to finish
Review: I too, read the reviews and decided to give this one a shot. I enjoyed Hazzard's writing style, but the crawling story line was terribly dull and did not go very far. I could care less about the characters and their encounters throughout the book. The complete lack of drama was unengaging and disappointing, especially for a book set in the post World War II era.
Rating:
Summary: Totally pretentious
Review: WHAT A WASTE OF TIME! THIS IS THE MOST PRETENTIOUS PIECE OF DRIVE I HAVE READ IN MANY MONTHS. TWO BORING MEN WHO HAVE SURVIVED THE SECOND WORLD WAR.... ONE FALLS IN LOVE WITH A....17 YEAR OLD......WHO IS FROM A TOTALLY DEMENTED FAMILY. PLEEEEEASE...SPARE US. HOW DID SHE FIND AN EDITOR, NEVER MIND A PUBLISHER. SAVE YOUR MONEY.
Rating:
Summary: Over-rated
Review: This is an ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful novel. The theme is the effort to recapture life after the chaos and destruction of WWII. The answer appears to be love, particularly a sort of very romanticized, relatively selfless form of romantic love. The primary character is a British writer in love with a teenage girl. His character is contrasted with a friend who is also searching for some authenticity in his life. The theme is certainly worthwhile.
Unfortunately, while Hazzard is certainly a skillful writer, her skills are deployed in a way that makes this book unattractive. Her highly allusive prose has a generally flat quality and becomes monotonous despite her attempts to engage a variety of characters and situations. Her characters and not particularly engaging, a major defect in a novel with a large psychological component.
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