'Shirley Hazzard' by Brigitta Olubas
Romantic love was her abiding theme, but she wasn’t a romance novelist. Instead, Shirley Hazzard was the author of a pair of much-admired literary novels from the late 20th century, The Great Fire and The Transit of Venus. She was an Australian expat with an unplaceable accent and an impeccable demeanor, cosmopolitan from her years with the UN and the New Yorker and her life in Capri.
Brigitta Olubas is an Australian academic who has made Hazzard her specialty. Olubas’ scrupulously researched biography details her life with a clarity the novelist might have admired in a full account that never bogs down in the extraneous. Quoting often from Hazzard’s letters, diaries and interviews, Olubas reveals a woman who married well and was able to live without the pressure of writing on deadline. She wrote slowly, bringing a lightly worn erudition and love of fine prose to every chapter. “Untimely” is a word Olubas often uses to describe Hazzard’s novels, populated by strong women without recourse to the usual talking points of feminism.
