book 74

shirley hazzard's the great fire
so i got the book nerd edition of trivial pursuit last week, and christina and i were looking at some of the cards during our radio show--she was quizzing me while i ran the board, mostly. and there was a question about this book! my eyes widened at the coincidence as i practically gasped, "that book! it's in my bag RIGHT NOW!" i hadn't started reading it yet and was amused by the intersection of question and locality. but now i've read it. sigh. it did not live up to its trivia-related fun fate. one of my major problems w/ the story was the high language involved--not just the author's narration, but all the characters spoke in this ridiculous poetic style. i mean, the main girl character is frequently called "a changeling" or "a mermaid" by the male characters. b/c yeah, in 1947, that's really how men described pretty girls. also, the major plot of the story--it's about a thirty-something british guy macking on a 17 year old australian girl in post-war japan--just didn't ring my bells. the subplot, about the main character's old friend doing some job or another in hong kong, was a lot more interesting, and nothing really happened there either. i was going to cite examples of the ridiculous dialogue, but now i don't even want to reread the annoying prose to amuse my three readers. i started to wonder if there would be some big tragedy keeping this stupid couple apart, like, say, a GREAT BIG FIRE, but there wasn't. in fact, i don't remember any fires in the book at all. i guess it's a metaphor for hiroshima, even though that's only mentioned like twice, since discussing a 17 year old girl's "silver eyes and hair" is a lot more relevant. except, you know, not.