It is after the war and after the bomb, but before the recovery. A space The Great Fire fills with love, letters and Aldred Leith. Not too far from Hiroshima, and after walking across China, this decorated war hero comes to document what he sees and to find out what is left to feel.
It is a time when soldiers are sending the spoils of war home to America and Britain, as their families are still rationing. Communication is largely via mail, often unreliably delivered. The world is taking shallow breaths. Shirley Hazzard describes a space left empty. In ruined cities the rubble has been removed, ready for rebuilding. The most significant structures are temporary military bases. People’s lives are still dominated by the war.
Love is The Great Fire’s great understatement. Quietly discussed in private, barely muted in public. The value of the companionship in relationships is evident in the late 1940s, a time when so many people didn’t return. Love is interspersed with the loneliness of those who have lost love, or simply failed to find it.
Aldred Leith is surrounded by love. As our leading man he deals with it always: an absence of love from his father, as an object of worship by a dedicated friend, and as part of a misplaced love, lost somewhere in war and ending in divorce. His new love is of the forbidden kind. Hazzard uses Leith, an enigmatic protagonist, to explore the spaces created by different relationships. The book is poignant, questioning the significance of relationships, and how they relate to the rest of our lives, leading us to ask what our responsibilities might be as an employee, a parent, a lover or a friend.
Leith is staying at a military base, run by a hardened, aspirational couple from whom he keeps his distance. Especially as he finds himself so close to their children, two capable young adults who have travelled widely and able to share in his experiences and stories. There is safety in the space created by romantic imaginings, especially following so closely the destruction of the atomic bomb. Benedict is the elder and has a terminal illness. His sister, Helen, provokes in Leith a longing and tenderness behind his stoic demeanor. Leith consciously removes himself to other countries and other business, uncertain of his own motives. The space between them is excruciating.
Relationships are bridged across Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and