The Transit of Venus

By: Shirley Hazzard

Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Shirley Hazzard

First time available as an audiobook! Narrated by Juliet Stevenson and featuring archival audio of Shirley Hazzard reading from the book on the stage of the 92NYC.

"One of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century.”–The Paris Review

"Hazzard's prose is magic on the page, somehow at once surgical and symphonic . . . Read it now, so you can read it again soon."—Tad Friend, The New Yorker

The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves

“An almost perfect novel” (The New York Times), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal.

Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death, and two secrets wait in ambush for them.

In exquisite prose, Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a tantalizing love story that will transport listeners with “its plushness, patient description, [and] etherizing beauty” (Parul Sagal, The New York Times).

©1980 Shirley Hazzard (P)1980, 2024 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks

Great, sad story

It's a beautiful story of the different life trajectories of two orphaned sisters from Australia transplanted to England. Narrator Juliette Stevenson is the best. The only flaw here is she does a really poor American accent.

Not my favorite read.

Beautiful Prose. But for reading enjoyment, much too much description and not enough story. Challenging to complete.