[The Transit of Venus] unfolds in rural England, the Chelsea district of London, Japan, the Algarve of Portugal, New York City, Chile and Stockholm. Therefore it evokes place as a necessary condition of its style and the circumstances of its six pivotal characters. It begins at the time of the Korean War and ends with Detente. Therefore it ponders Europe drifting toward anarchy, Soviet tanks grinding into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, political murder in Latin America and social assassination in the United States, and a relentless catastrophe laying waste Southeast Asia. (p. 1)

But the larger world of ideological competition and social hunger serves Hazzard like her ice-water lakes in Sweden, Kleenex-box buildings in new York or lacerated countryside in Britain. She is a projectionist. She focuses her characters into place. They and their climates, terrains and social contracts become one.

The essence of her narrative is that life is...