The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
I first discovered Shirley Hazzard when I found a pocket-sized edition of The Great Fire in a thrift store. For many months, I carried The Great Fire around, reading it at random or flipping through it, until finally I sat down and read it in one big gulp. This method of reading The Great Fire, of fits and spurts before I finally jumped into it, was very fitting to the book. Shirley Hazzard writes with stark, quick descriptions, which bleed inexorably into a startlingly complex picture of loss.
The book begins with Aldred Leith, who has been assigned to report on the conditions of Japan and Hiroshima following World War 2, and expands to tell a larger story of humanity’s attempts to process grief through the perspectives of characters surrounding Leith. The story is at first cold; the emotional responses of the characters are not as immediate and fully felt as in other books I’ve read. Yet, upon reading further, I found this hesitance and shyness of the novel to be its strongest strength. In Hazzard’s slow revealing of the characters, the reader is introduced to the hazy, war-torn reality the characters are faced with, in which the characters are grappling, just as the reader is, for a more tangible, sharp vision of loss. This slow desperation builds on itself until the book becomes almost taut, until it is almost unbearable to read because of how suddenly striking and beautiful the story becomes. With a few more neat, seemingly simple sentences, Hazzard closes her novel, and the reader is left with a portrait of mourning, of stillness, and of the world spinning onward despite all it has left behind.
I would highly recommend to anyone who is looking for a good lesson on writing and books—Hazzard’s method of using apparently stark sentences to grasp complicated, painful realities is stunning and is one of the best gifts of The Great Fire. Along with this gift are many others; the book is a fascinating glimpse into the time period after World War 2, is stunning in its character dynamics and depictions of characters’ struggles, and, in the end, manages to give the reader a glimpse of hope that is both grounded in the reality of the novel and somehow still sings with beauty.
Reviewed by Teen Volunteer, 10/13/25.