"The Transit of Venus" is not a perfect novel. One important character—a handsome, intelligent, heroic American—simply isn't credible; he talks like a fancy book. In fact, many of Shirley Hazzard's characters are a little too well-spoken, too knowing; whenever they open their mouths an insight pops out. This knowingness leads us to expect a comedy of manners. "The Transit of Venus" is not a comedy of manners. Its business, instead, is to break the heart. Although I suppose that such emotions are inappropriate to criticism, I finished the novel angry and in tears.

On the other hand, "The Charterhouse of Parma" was not a perfect novel. Miss Hazzard writes as well as Stendhal. No matter the object—a feeling, a face, a room, the weather—it is stripped of its layers of paint, its clots of words, down to the original wood; oil is applied; grain...