I can look up from my computer screen and see some of the books I've read over the past year or so. I liked them all, but when I look at them I realize I don't remember much about some of them. [b:The Exiles|49397137|The Exiles|Christina Baker Kline|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585357375l/49397137.SY75.jpg|73236056] was good, I think, or I would have donated to my library's used bookstore by now, but I'd have to pick it up and look at a few pages to refresh my memory.
 That won't happen with [a:Shirley Hazzard|7486|Shirley Hazzard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1418422924p2/7486.jpg]'s [b:The Great Fire|11737|The Great Fire|Shirley Hazzard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327998858l/11737.SX50.jpg|2453617]. It is so wondrously good that I actually began rereading it before I was finished reading it. I wanted to see if passages I'd read were as good as I'd thought they were while I was reading them, or whether it was because of something new to me about her style that made me think they were.
 They were objectively that good. Think of the best writing by [a:Emma Cline|2926065|Emma Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1448177198p2/2926065.jpg] or [a:Karen Russell|26417|Karen Russell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1295563225p2/26417.jpg] and add in [a:James Salter|11298|James Salter|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1360177449p2/11298.jpg] and Hazzard's her own style I'm much too unliterary to talk about. It's the best book I've read in years, and I can't wait to read [b:The Transit of Venus|12738|The Transit of Venus|Shirley Hazzard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347622666l/12738.SY75.jpg|1178456].
 Much of it takes place in Japan during the post WWII occupation.

Long and narrow, the lounge had possibly been a dormitory. Furnished now by a scattering of vermilion chairs in false leather, and by an improvised bar, on trestles at the far end of the room, where a score of servicemen and a dozen nurses stood talking and laughing and flirting under a canopy of tobacco smoke; dropping ash from fingers and spilling drink from paper cups. The table was ranged with bottles and scattered with dropped nuts and flaked potatoes. The men were, in varying degrees, drunk. The younger women had unrolled their regulation hair for the evening. Some of them were pretty, and had exchanged their uniforms for coloured dresses; and wore, on slim wrists, the linked bracelets of gunmetal, black and gilt, improvised by Japanese peddlers from the fallen scraps of war and sold to conquerors on the streets of ruined cities. Two or three of the girls trilled and twirled to imaginary music while a soldier, who knelt at their feet, was setting up a gramophone from a ganglion of wires.