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The Great Fire Audiobook by Shirley Hazzard
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Title: The Great Fire
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: Shirley Hazzard
Narrator: Virginia Leishman
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-16-04
Publisher: Recorded Books
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 106 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
National Book Award, Fiction, 2003
Thirty-two-year-old war hero Aldred Leith is in Japan to survey the Hiroshima devastation. His close friend and fellow veteran Peter Exley prosecutes Japanese war criminals in Hong Kong. Striving to rebuild lives shattered by war, both men reach critical turning points. Leith falls in love with a precocious and charming 17-year-old girl, while Exley faces a decision that will forever alter his path.
Author Shirley Hazzard's first novel in more than 20 years, The Great Fire is an elegant and beautifully crafted story that resonates long past the final word.
Critic Reviews:
"What blows away all cobwebs is the extraordinary quality of the writing, gravely beautiful and utterly attentive...[a] marvelous book." (The Observer) "Hazzard combines emotion on a scale we associate with 19th century novels with language that has the freedom and lucid precision of early 20th century modernism." (Salon.com) "The purity of her sentences, each one resonant with implication, create an effortless flow. This is a quiet book, but one that carries portents well beyond its time and place, suggesting the disquieting state of our current world." (Publishers Weekly)
Members Reviews:
Always found something else to do
This is one of those books that must be better as a read than a listen. I would listen for a while, lose track, rewind. You know the ritual. In the end, I got through about three hours of it. Life of Pi has a slow start but then becomes engrossing. This doesn't ever make that step. The review says it's beautifully written. I like a well written book but not something that plods along like this.
Save your money and your time
The review sounded so good I couldn't resist. I was hoping for another "Memoirs of a Geisha" but boy, was I disappointed. The story bounces all over the place, never seems to have a consistent theme and finally, turns out to be just plain boring. I'll give the author some credit; the imagery is nice and having traveled to many of the same locations in Asia myself, I enjoyed her descriptions of those places set in a bygone era. Unfortunately, the budding story of a war hero's longing for a very young girl (he refers to her as the "Changeling") made me think the guy was little more than a pedophile.
Profound Waste of Time
I've probably listened to about 200 audiobooks. This was, without any hesitation, the most wretchedly, painfully boring book I have ever heard. Every single character was amazingly unlikeable. I detested them all. I was disappointed when I realized (after finishing the first half) that it wasn't over -- there were another three hours to endure. The plot is insipid. The production was poor (several times we were told that we were at the end of a cassette tape). The narrator's voice was a grating, fake british accent. Several times (and the memory makes me shudder) to set the post-war mood, she sings a lyric or two from popular songs of the era. I loathe this book. I want the eight hours I spent listening to this back.
A high-class romance novel
The "Great Fire" is a high-class romance novel that contains a mixture of historical fiction, psychological portraiture, political commentary on WWII and its aftermath (particularly in east Asia, but also with some focus on England & Australia & New Zealand).
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By DOWNLOAD FULL AUDIOBOOKS FOR FREE ON HOTAUDIOBOOK.COMPlease open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: The Great Fire
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: Shirley Hazzard
Narrator: Virginia Leishman
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-16-04
Publisher: Recorded Books
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 106 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
National Book Award, Fiction, 2003
Thirty-two-year-old war hero Aldred Leith is in Japan to survey the Hiroshima devastation. His close friend and fellow veteran Peter Exley prosecutes Japanese war criminals in Hong Kong. Striving to rebuild lives shattered by war, both men reach critical turning points. Leith falls in love with a precocious and charming 17-year-old girl, while Exley faces a decision that will forever alter his path.
Author Shirley Hazzard's first novel in more than 20 years, The Great Fire is an elegant and beautifully crafted story that resonates long past the final word.
Critic Reviews:
"What blows away all cobwebs is the extraordinary quality of the writing, gravely beautiful and utterly attentive...[a] marvelous book." (The Observer) "Hazzard combines emotion on a scale we associate with 19th century novels with language that has the freedom and lucid precision of early 20th century modernism." (Salon.com) "The purity of her sentences, each one resonant with implication, create an effortless flow. This is a quiet book, but one that carries portents well beyond its time and place, suggesting the disquieting state of our current world." (Publishers Weekly)
Members Reviews:
Always found something else to do
This is one of those books that must be better as a read than a listen. I would listen for a while, lose track, rewind. You know the ritual. In the end, I got through about three hours of it. Life of Pi has a slow start but then becomes engrossing. This doesn't ever make that step. The review says it's beautifully written. I like a well written book but not something that plods along like this.
Save your money and your time
The review sounded so good I couldn't resist. I was hoping for another "Memoirs of a Geisha" but boy, was I disappointed. The story bounces all over the place, never seems to have a consistent theme and finally, turns out to be just plain boring. I'll give the author some credit; the imagery is nice and having traveled to many of the same locations in Asia myself, I enjoyed her descriptions of those places set in a bygone era. Unfortunately, the budding story of a war hero's longing for a very young girl (he refers to her as the "Changeling") made me think the guy was little more than a pedophile.
Profound Waste of Time
I've probably listened to about 200 audiobooks. This was, without any hesitation, the most wretchedly, painfully boring book I have ever heard. Every single character was amazingly unlikeable. I detested them all. I was disappointed when I realized (after finishing the first half) that it wasn't over -- there were another three hours to endure. The plot is insipid. The production was poor (several times we were told that we were at the end of a cassette tape). The narrator's voice was a grating, fake british accent. Several times (and the memory makes me shudder) to set the post-war mood, she sings a lyric or two from popular songs of the era. I loathe this book. I want the eight hours I spent listening to this back.
A high-class romance novel
The "Great Fire" is a high-class romance novel that contains a mixture of historical fiction, psychological portraiture, political commentary on WWII and its aftermath (particularly in east Asia, but also with some focus on England & Australia & New Zealand).