戰爭劫火

Title: The Great Fire
Author: Hazzard, Shirley (1931 - )
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003 
326 p (paperback)
Read by: 08/20/2012, my collection
Genre: Fiction

Despite the critique acclaims, I would offer the book adjectives copied from other readers’ reviews: Oblique and esoteric style, archaic wording, tepid love story, thin and dull characters. I wish I could give five or four stars to the book. After reading Junot Diaz, I meant for a change. It’s hard to understand what Shirley wanted to say. In the first ten pages, the slow pace and low tone matched the backdrop which was World War II in Japan. I was able to bear the ambiguity and read along. My first startle was the death of Gardiner in page 21, a sick professor who was the first connection Leith had in Japan. It was described so subtly: “Whose colour and texture were that of old bread” was my only clue. I didn’t realize it meant death till the page after where it was explicitly stated. No motion no emotion were given. A death was so casually passed by Shirley. So was the second death of a suicide case of a Japanese. That very Japanese was mentioned only briefly in a prior page when Ben was reproaching him. The bringing-up of his death was trivial, only one or two sentences. It was never attempted to explain the reason of self killing, my immediate guess was the humiliation from Ben, the second guess running deeper was the humiliation of the defeat of the country in WWII.  But instead, the author used this incident in two places to bring up how Helen first encountered Leith’s arms because of the “profound death” while I failed to read how profound it was in the author’s writing. Later I recognized it was Shirley’s style - she likes to treat profound details casually while elaborating other details meticulously, for example the glimpse of Helen’s sleep through an open window.

Other than what other readers criticized, I found unbearable to read broken sentences with ill grammar filling the entire book. I marked four red sticky flags on one single page to indicate my irritation. My professor would surely turn the writing back to me for a re-write, had I written her way. Examples in page 34: 1) Barry deplored. “When I was her age, try to keep me indoors.” I could make it out now after finishing the book that “her” referred to Helen, and it was their mother tried to keep “me” indoors. 2) “Even if my poor boy was able to”. To what?? There was no context. 3) A scattering of postcards was a signal of dwindling correspondence – he had, for some people, been away too long. Why does the author feel the need to say “for some people”? And who are they? Where are they? Why “away” if Leith just arrived in Japan? The suspense riddle was never solved for the readers. And there are a few suspenses like this which are not important but hanging there and here, forcing a fifth wheel feeling on the readers. Or is it just me? Oh by the way, can’t the author say “he had been away too long for some people”? The two additional commas are killingly unnecessary. 4) A good letter had been posted from Bombay by an army friend now sailing towards Hong Kong. Can the author bother to tell me what a “good letter” is? She bothered to say it, but not to tell it. I can add a 5th to this page on a paragraph about Ben and Helen, I was in complete clouds when reading “diagnosis”, “voyage”, “reunion”, “curtailment”, “salvation” etc. There was no context, before or immediately after. Only when I was done with the entire book, I know what Shirley was talking about by such abbreviated mentioning. Look at one of many dialogs:

“You found Nightingale Road.” Mrs. Fry had come, startling, out of a chair.
Her daughter explained: “Mother tends to materialize.”
“So you’ve come to enliven us.”
Helen said, “That wasn’t made a condition of acceptance.”

This dialog made no sense to me, other than it was cold. It therefore surprised me to read the mother and daughter decided after the conversation to invite Helen again to their home. Geez, am I stupid? I kept falling from Shirley’s lines.

Reading is very personal. So is writing.

Shirley’s writing matches her photo: On the sleeve page was a black and white photo of the author in strip dress shirt with a sleeveless loose sweater on top. She sat by a window looking away from the camera, to a view beyond the glass which is not in the sight of the readers. A tender, elegant, old fashioned lady, very much detached from the world she sat in. I admit however her writing is subtly powerful, I started to pick up her style of short sentences. But I would never pick up her deliberated broken sentences. It may be in line with the world and life torn by the war in her story. I would like to find evidence if this is Shirley’s all time style or just in this book. Our library does not have collections of her other works. Readers’ reviews on this book of hers are quite split. Either you hate it or love it. Of the protagonist Leith his colonial assertive favor on people he barely knew is unbearable to me. And why did professor, teenager, tailor and typist all talk alike? I wonder if the war made everyone a philosopher.