Review by Booklist Review
This exhaustively researched biography details the eventful and well-traveled life of Shirley Hazzard, the hugely influential Australian American author of classics such as The Transit of Venus (1980). Olubas constructs a fascinating portrait of Hazzard's early life in Australia, and throughout she weaves in astute suggestions of biographical experiences that influenced Hazzard's fiction. Hazzard's father's governmental postings enabled her to live in Hong Kong, New Zealand, London, and then New York, experiences that became a rich tapestry of sources for her worldly fiction. Most directly, in New York Hazzard worked at the UN, an institution she critiqued throughout her career. After a few failed relationships, in 1963 Hazzard met the much-lauded translator Francis Steegmuller--whose admittedly fascinating life is perhaps given too much space here by Olubas--whom she married, and they lived an incredible life together in Naples, as well as crisscrossing the globe and meeting such literati as Ralph Ellison, Graham Greene, and many more. While sometimes too detailed, this is an impressive, revealing, and worthy biography of one of the most important writers of the last century.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A woman raised in tumult seeks a higher realm in art and literature in this rich biography from Olubas (Shirley Hazzard: Literary Expatriate and Cosmopolitan Humanist). Born in Australia in 1931, Hazzard had an "unhappy childhood" and "embarked early on a project of self-cultivation and self-creation through extensive and passionate reading." That culminated, the author writes, in her marriage to the well-heeled Francis Steegmuller, a Flaubert scholar and translator 25 years her senior, as it cemented Hazzard's social position and offered her financial security. Of strong opinions, Hazzard roundly condemned Nixon as "Satanic," while calling Reagan "a new dimension of blatancy in evil." The book's chief charm, however, lies in documenting Hazzard's witnessing the span of the 20th century--as Hazzard herself wrote to a friend, "I saw Hiroshima in ruins, I knew a Hong Kong without skyscrapers... heard Eliot read The Four Quartets... walked about a blitzed but marvellous London." All of this became fodder for Hazzard's well-received stories, essays, and novels. Olubas does a fine job dealing frankly with those who disliked Hazzard's "elitism" as well as those who praised her, with a careful touch for capturing the "implicit misogyny" she was up against. Hazzard emerges as intelligent, complex, and determined--fans of her work should check out this insightful portrait. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Preeminent Shirley Hazzard researcher Olubas (English, Univ. of New South Wales; Shirley Hazzard: Literary Expatriate and Cosmopolitan Humanist) opens the door to Hazzard's mind and private life in her latest work. Hazzard's surviving notebooks, correspondence, and photos enliven this journey through her written life, including her years at the New Yorker and her life abroad in Hong Kong, London, New York City, and more. A perfect companion piece to Hazzard's written works, this collection will help readers to better understand the writer and the exciting life she led. Readers will end up with a deeper understanding of how place and events impacted her, such as living through the Great Depression and living in postwar Naples and New York. Olubas also uses interviews with Hazzard's close family and friends to flesh out the narrative and provide a fuller picture of her experiences. VERDICT Fans of Hazzard will greatly appreciate this well-researched biography of her life through the places she lived.--Mattie Cook
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An illuminating portrait of the esteemed Australian-born fiction writer and essayist. With her early fiction in the 1960s and '70s, Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) was quickly recognized as a prose stylist of distinctive intelligence and insight. In 1980, The Transit of Venus firmly secured her standing, in particular among other writers; more than 20 years later, The Great Fire won the National Book Award and garnered her a new readership. In this scrupulously researched biography, Olubas, an English professor at the University of New South Wales and editor of two volumes of Hazzard's work, charts the meandering course of Hazzard's life and travels, drawing on events and impressions that would inform much of her writing. The author begins with Hazzard's early years growing up in Sydney and moves through her experiences as a teen living in Hong Kong and her family's move to New York City, where, at age 20, she landed a job at the United Nations. Working as a Secretariat typist for the next 10 years, she gathered critical insights into the organization, which she would use in her later nonfiction work. Throughout these early years, Hazzard also had a series of love affairs, adding further grist for her fiction. Olubas describes Hazzard's journey as a process of self-invention, noting how "she embarked early on a project of self-cultivation and self-creation through extensive and passionate reading. Throughout her adult life she mixed in elevated cultural circles, seeking out people to admire and learn from." One of those people was Francis Steegmuller, with whom she shared a long, satisfying marriage. They traveled extensively and kept homes in New York and Capri, and though her reputation within the literary community was well established, upon her marriage, that influential circle expanded further. Olubas provides numerous anecdotes about their encounters with many of the leading literary figures of their time, including Graham Greene, W.H. Auden, Muriel Spark, and Saul Bellow. Throughout, Olubas offers a discerning, cleareyed perspective of Hazzard's complex character and a persuasive appraisal of what distinguishes her work. An absorbing, well-crafted profile of a supremely gifted writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
