Originally published in 1980, Shirley Hazzard's novel The Transit of Venus displays her prodigious talent. Hazzard, a past winner of National Book Critics Award, tells the story of Caroline and Grace Bell who have come from Australia to find work and love in England. Caro enters into a passionate but not long lived affair with playwright Paul Ivory. Her sister, Grace, the "good girl," marries and leads a conventional life but yearns for something more. The bulk of the book is centered on Caro, as she's called, and the revelation of some secrets that change her conception of self and history. Hazzard doesn't cast her characters as angels or sinners but through rich prose, exposes the consequences of human vulnerability.