I came to this book via a review of Hazzard’s work in the New York Review of Books calling this her masterpiece. It starts slowly, revolving around two sisters, Grace and Caro Bell who emigrate to England from Australia in the fifties. We are introduced to many of the men whose lives they orbit. Both sister over the course of the novel become more full characters but Caro is definitely more formed and more distinctive of the two.
The milieu is upper middle class intelligencia and chock full of diplomats and playwrights. The prose is expert with many arresting phrases, metaphors and expressions. However, I didn’t love the novel. I admired it much like I admired the sisters who are great examples of vivid characters who manage to inhabit the page without requiring melodrama either between them or even with the other characters. That said, I still felt a distance from them emotionally and a lack of immediacy.
There is a refreshing lack of finality or closure to most of the relationships even though there is something of an arc for them as well. Yet this lack of drama or melodrama keeps the book at arms length for me. I don’t fully engage with all the elements. I’m glad I read the book and I can see recommending it as speaking to a kind of late 20th century mostly female experience but I’m not inclined to Hazzard more (sorry!)
