The Transit of Venus

In the 1950s, orphaned Australian sisters Caroline and Grace Bell relocate to London, where they stay in the home of eminent astronomer Sefton Thrale. Steady Grace meets Professor Thrale’s son, well-to-do bureaucrat Christian Thrale, and soon marries Christian and settles into a conventional relationship. Unlike her sister, Caroline strives for independence and ponders the vagaries of human relationships. Young astronomer Ted Tice is besotted with Caroline, but Caroline prefers upper-crust Paul Ivory, a self-absorbed playwright engaged to a woman of his own class. Caroline is devastated when Paul leaves her, but she later meets and marries wealthy American Adam Vail. Through the events that follow—death, tragedy, betrayal, and a shocking secret revealed—the characters’ lives intersect and diverge again, much like celestial orbits. The late Hazzard’s (The Great Fire) novel, first published in 1980, consists of intricate descriptions and insights into the human condition. It argues that everyone has secrets and that one person can never really know another. Actor Juliet Stevenson narrates with elegance, providing varied accents and voices and capturing the elegiacal mood of Hazzard’s lyrically described world.