num_pages: 337
description: The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women -- seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal -- becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves.Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.
language: English
title: The Transit of Venus
titlecomplete: The Transit of Venus
characters: Charmian Thrale, Gwen Morphew, Tertia Drage, Christian Thrale, Major Bruce Ingot, Caroline Bell, Paul Ivory, Armand Elphinstone, Josie Vail, Cordelia Ware, Grace Bell, Nicholas Cartledge, Glad Pomfret, Angus Dance, Ted Tice, Victor Locker, Margaret Tice, Ernesto Prata, Sefton Thrale, Clive Leadbetter, Dora Bell, Adam Vail
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, British Literature, Womens, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, Australia, Novels
ratings_count: 4046
places: London, England, Sydney, New South Wales, England, New York City, New York
awards: awardedAt: 347184000000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 315561600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 378720000000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction (Hardcover) (1982) & (Paperback)
publisher: Macmillan