The Transit of Venus

I always enjoy stories (books or films) that are character-driven, especially those that introduce you to the main character or characters and stay with them over decades.

In this book, we follow the lives of two orphaned Australian sisters who arrive in England in the 1950s: Fair Grace marries a wealthy and officious bureaucrat while independent, dark-haired Caroline falls in love with the unscrupulous Paul Ivory, while the sweet Ted Tice pines for her. Decades later, we witness the bonds and betrayals that follow the earlier choices.

Beautifully written!

I did something, while reading this book, that I rarely do: I repeatedly flipped back to re-read sentences—sometimes to find missed clues, sometimes to savor the jewel-like writing. 

Early on, I noticed an interesting detail about one character. But I became so absorbed in the plot that I forgot about it… so I thought. Until almost the end, when that tiny seed exploded. (How did the author manage to plant a seed so easily forgotten, yet so tenacious?)

I also loved how the novel pushes deeper and deeper into the motivations, secrets, and fears of the five main characters—two sisters… show more.

In post-war London, two orphaned Australian girls, Caro and Grace, seek their fortune.

An astronomer, Ted, falls in love with Caro, a love that will long be unrequited. Grace makes a safe marriage to a smug Englishman and the story follows the sisters’ respective trajectories, along with Ted’s. Spanning decades and continents it is beautifully written, evoking a claustrophobic and frustrating time for women.

It is grand in scope, examining colonialism and contrasting love and beauty with power and betrayal. I loved the ambiguity in the story, the sense that nothing can ever be pinned down and that disaster can… show more.

In this masterpiece, we follow two sisters from post-World War Two onward through love, betrayal, marriages, and widowhood. She manages to cover a good part of adult female experiences as lovers and wives and beyond. But truly, this is a book worth reading and re-reading because with every new pass, you’ll find something new to marvel at. The twists and turns of the plot are subtle…this is sentence by sentence prose amazingness. The book was published in the 1980s but it feels edgy and modern in its way of slipping into the minds of the two sisters as they make… show more.