The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard
The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard
1 Rating(s)
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The Transit of Venus

Author: Shirley Hazzard

Narrator: Juliet Stevenson, Shirley Hazzard

Unabridged: 15 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2024


Synopsis

One of BookPage, Slate, and Library Journal’s Best Audiobooks of 2024! “This inaugural version [of the audiobook] is beautifully read by British actor Juliet Stevenson, whose performance resonates with the dry, knowing wit required to take on Hazzard’s masterpiece.”— Kirkus The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves “An almost perfect novel” (The New York Times), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal. Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. 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 secrets wait in ambush for them. In exquisite prose, Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a tantalizing love story that will transport listeners with “its plushness, patient description, [and] etherizing beauty.” (Parul Sagal, The New York Times)

Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on March 11, 2021

Shirley Hazard is without question a first rate wordsmith; she can write beautiful sentences and string them together into an exhilarating music. She does it consistently. But she seems incapable of writing a truly first rate novel. The Great Fire nearly made it but failed ultimately for me because......more

Goodreads review by emma on November 26, 2024

this is my first shirley hazzard novel after having read her collected stories, but i still came away with basically the same thought: when hazzard is at her best, she's brilliantly capturing these kind of unspoken, purely human moments of everyday life. this had a lot of that. her writing is so grea......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on January 20, 2016

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......more

Goodreads review by Candi on September 01, 2024

Damn you, Shirley Hazzard! Why?! I wanted to throw something at someone when I finished reading this. I immediately went right back to the beginning and skimmed my way through the entire novel once again. “You owe your existence to astronomy, young woman.” I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a l......more

Goodreads review by Katie on March 16, 2021

The story of the amorous lives of two orphaned Australian sisters who arrive in post-war England. Grace is the more conventional and the better suited to domesticity. Caro is far less easily tamed. She rejects the advances of the nice guy in favour of those of the bad guy. Paul is a successful playw......more