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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
roland106's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Complicated
4.0
erinmalonepoet's review against another edition
4.0
The writing here is elegant and subtle, belying the turbulence of the characters and their stories in Post WWII Italy. It's passages like this one near the end that I most admired:
"Arriving in America, I was coming from this. Some part of me would always be coming, now, from this. Like the dye they had injected into my veins, the country coloured my essence, illuminated the reaction to everything else. Here, literally, I had come to my senses."
"Arriving in America, I was coming from this. Some part of me would always be coming, now, from this. Like the dye they had injected into my veins, the country coloured my essence, illuminated the reaction to everything else. Here, literally, I had come to my senses."
yasmin15's review against another edition
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Complicated
2.0
laura_reads_'s review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
lilybatley's review against another edition
2.0
For a book focused on characters over plot, I would have hoped to have liked the characters better. Unfortunately, I didn’t think any of the characters were particularly interesting or profound and their stories a bit lacking.
An extra star for the imagery. The description of the characters’ surroundings was very well done.
An extra star for the imagery. The description of the characters’ surroundings was very well done.
mcbtx2024's review against another edition
4.0
Young English woman moves to Naples and meets a group of people who change her life.
dbianco's review against another edition
4.0
A beautifully observed portrait of a time & a place that came to be inhabited by 4 people: a charismatic Italian artist called Gioconda, a typically boorish-but-complicated man called Gianni (typical for Hazzard, that is), a cool intellectual called Justin, & our young British narrator, Jenny. Hazzard's writing on place - in this book - is delicate & insightful, though occasionally insensitive (I'm not sure if I'd appreciate the image of Naples as being crushed by poverty if I actually lived there) & I admit my perception of Italy was often at odds with Hazzard's. But that's the delight of this book, the particularity of its viewpoint, the keenness of its observances, the clean, hungry beauty of its prose. It left me craving summer dinners on the terrace overlooking the beach, & ill-fated romances of the kind that are meant to make youth beautiful & bittersweet. It left me thinking of my own past in places like Capri & Naples, & wishing it had all turned out better. It left me sad & yearning, & not many books do that. Not anymore.
Having just finished Hazzard's earlier book, The Evening of the Holiday, & found it wanting a sense of place & an immediacy of voice, I was very satisfied to find those elements here, & for that reason I think I appreciated Jenny more than some other of Hazzard's protagonists. I still don't understand Jenny's attraction to Gianni, but that's almost a mainstay of Hazzard's fiction, I think: the gothic style of her relationships, the men all overwhelming masculine power, the women all distracted submissiveness. As if they haven't any other idea in their heads but what is presented to them. Forced upon them, I should say. They see a fingertip in a wrist, a particular bend to his neck, a *something* in his gaze, & so it is implied to the reader that this is attraction, this is love.
I half wonder why it is Hazzard keeps writing about love. Or rather, why she keeps writing about compulsion & calling it love. And I think my wonder has to do with the fact that Hazzard's writing is so intellectualised. Does she write about 'love' as a kind of counter-measure to that fierce intelligence of hers, is she trying to address an imbalance? Or is she merely articulating something that is actually quite genuine?
That is, is she really so overwhelmed by love herself that the only way for her fiction to come close to her real-life experiences is is in these brutish relationships she keeps imagining? Or does she feel no love at all, and in recompense, builds it into something greater in her imagination, something primal & undeniable? Because her heroines seem, quite frankly, often rather passive & emotionless. Keen-eyed observers of the great passions that seem more often to move men but which, ultimately, are almost always proven to be fickle. And that's the rub: they almost always are fleeting, the attractions of men towards women. And hardly ever the other way around, women's attraction to men being so dreadfully resolute.
What IS Hazzard's relationship to love, after all? Apart from it being a ready, tragic literary conceit?
(Note: in 2010, this book was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker prize, for books that missed out when the rules for the Man Booker changed in 1970.)
#aww2013 no.02
Having just finished Hazzard's earlier book, The Evening of the Holiday, & found it wanting a sense of place & an immediacy of voice, I was very satisfied to find those elements here, & for that reason I think I appreciated Jenny more than some other of Hazzard's protagonists. I still don't understand Jenny's attraction to Gianni, but that's almost a mainstay of Hazzard's fiction, I think: the gothic style of her relationships, the men all overwhelming masculine power, the women all distracted submissiveness. As if they haven't any other idea in their heads but what is presented to them. Forced upon them, I should say. They see a fingertip in a wrist, a particular bend to his neck, a *something* in his gaze, & so it is implied to the reader that this is attraction, this is love.
I half wonder why it is Hazzard keeps writing about love. Or rather, why she keeps writing about compulsion & calling it love. And I think my wonder has to do with the fact that Hazzard's writing is so intellectualised. Does she write about 'love' as a kind of counter-measure to that fierce intelligence of hers, is she trying to address an imbalance? Or is she merely articulating something that is actually quite genuine?
That is, is she really so overwhelmed by love herself that the only way for her fiction to come close to her real-life experiences is is in these brutish relationships she keeps imagining? Or does she feel no love at all, and in recompense, builds it into something greater in her imagination, something primal & undeniable? Because her heroines seem, quite frankly, often rather passive & emotionless. Keen-eyed observers of the great passions that seem more often to move men but which, ultimately, are almost always proven to be fickle. And that's the rub: they almost always are fleeting, the attractions of men towards women. And hardly ever the other way around, women's attraction to men being so dreadfully resolute.
What IS Hazzard's relationship to love, after all? Apart from it being a ready, tragic literary conceit?
(Note: in 2010, this book was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker prize, for books that missed out when the rules for the Man Booker changed in 1970.)
#aww2013 no.02
teresatumminello's review against another edition
4.0
3 and 1/2 stars
I wanted to say that this is a book that could only have been written by an author at the height of her powers, but I know Hazzard went on to write two even more beautifully written, complex novels after this one.
"The Bay of Noon" is about much more than what it seems to be about. It is about more than Naples, or even Italy, though a very strong sense of both comes through (including, through the pasts of two of the characters, what the city and the country suffered during WWII) because it is a story of place, any place -- about the need for a place. It is about more than a young Englishwoman and her intense friendship with an Italian couple and with a Scottish co-worker, because it is a microcosm of a life lived, though we only see in detail the 'noon' of this life.
Despite themes that I love (including the one of memory), I am not quite as enthusiastic about this book as my friends here are. I'm not sure why that is, except to say that I didn't feel completely engaged until near the book's end. And I did love the ending.
I plan on reading all Hazzard has written and the Italian setting here has got me wanting to read her memoir of Graham Greene on the island of Capri next.
I wanted to say that this is a book that could only have been written by an author at the height of her powers, but I know Hazzard went on to write two even more beautifully written, complex novels after this one.
"The Bay of Noon" is about much more than what it seems to be about. It is about more than Naples, or even Italy, though a very strong sense of both comes through (including, through the pasts of two of the characters, what the city and the country suffered during WWII) because it is a story of place, any place -- about the need for a place. It is about more than a young Englishwoman and her intense friendship with an Italian couple and with a Scottish co-worker, because it is a microcosm of a life lived, though we only see in detail the 'noon' of this life.
Despite themes that I love (including the one of memory), I am not quite as enthusiastic about this book as my friends here are. I'm not sure why that is, except to say that I didn't feel completely engaged until near the book's end. And I did love the ending.
I plan on reading all Hazzard has written and the Italian setting here has got me wanting to read her memoir of Graham Greene on the island of Capri next.