On Shirley Hazzard is a vibrant and personal tribute in which the
Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Michelle de Kretser offers a
masterclass in writing and reading.
She celebrates the precision and musicality of Hazzard's prose and
illuminates the humour and humanity in her work. This exhilarating book
is both a brilliant introduction to Hazzard and a gift for her longtime
readers.
On Shirley Hazzard reveals Michelle de Kretser's lively intelligence
at work and her distinctive wit. This testament to her sustained
engagement with Hazzard's work is, at its core, an appreciation of the
significance and joy of good fiction. Receptiveness when reading is a
prerequisite for perceptive analysis, according to both de Kretser and
Hazzard. And for prose, the "simple and precise," the "transient and
insignificant" are key qualities: "Not moonlight but the glitter of
broken glass," for de Kretser as for Chekhov.
Selective biographical details about Hazzard are relayed, too - her
leaving Australia and formal education at the age of 16, her working,
unhappily, at the United Nations in Manhattan, her long friendship with
Graham Greene. Hazzard's morality is also invoked - "solidarity with the
vulnerable" and pacifism being of prime importance.
Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) published her first short story in The New
Yorker in 1961. The magazine continued to publish her work in the
decades thereafter, including excerpts from her most successful and
beloved novel, the best-seller and National Book Critics Circle Award
winner, The Transit of Venus (1980). Michelle de Kretser's insightful
and provocative appreciation does Hazzard fine justice.
