Thursday, November 25, 2004

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

A story of Japan and Hong Kong shortly after World War II. A strange book,
kind of floaty and dream-like, in the way that what happens in a dream is
beyond one's control. It's like the characters feel that things are just
happening to them, which is quite likely given the muddled state of life
when everyone is recovering from a war. It's also a love story, but kind of
a strange love story. The characters seem to just suddenly and mutually
decide that they're in love with each other, but since the narrator doesn't
really talk about his feelings we don't actually see it happen. It also
seems to be trying to make some kind of commentary on age and youth, but
that's strange too. The male protagonist is in his late 20s/early 30s and
seems to feel that his youth is behind him, which is a strange thing to be
feeling because really he's still young. The woman he falls for is in her
late teens, and it seems like the book is trying to present this as a
midlife crisis thing, except he's too young to be having a midlife crisis,
and it's hardly the type of physical lust that one associates with a midlife
crisis. And it seem doubly strange since the author is in her 70s, so she
should certainly realize that 30 is not old. It's all slightly surreal
without intending to be so.

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