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BOOKS I READ: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (2003). A love story that, like a mushroom, rises out of the fungal mass after World War Two. The lives of Aldred Leith and the much younger Helen Driscoll become entwined during his visit to Kure, Japan. He is a member of the Allied military mopping up the devastation in Hiroshima. Her father is in charge there. A suicide by a local is the emotional lightning that brings the love story to life.
This is my third Hazzard book of the year (TofV, Collection). In all three, I found passages to read and re-read, absorbing the potion of her prose. The opening pages of chapter 21 was one such passage. Helen, now in New Zealand, is on a tram traveling to meet a friend at her seaside village. Hazzard places us inside Helen’s head, exquisitely describing the town, the vista of her surroundings, nonchalantly bringing us back, “So it seemed to her, parted from her best thoughts.”
This entry is in the Books I Read in 2021 summary. See previous entry:
