Lost Voices (Christopher Koch, Fourth Estate)

I love having Christopher Koch in Fullers Bookshop to talk about his books: there are not many authors I can introduce as past employees and Varley’s Bookshop in Koch’s 1985 novel The Doubleman is loosely based on his experience as a bookseller at Fullers long before I owned it. Koch has twice won the Miles Franklin Award and is highly regarded in Australian literary circles so I came to his latest novel with much anticipation. Lost Voices contains two stories, one set among Tasmania’s bushrangers in the 19th century and the other in 1950s Hobart. The stories are connected, like a lot of Tasmanians, by family ties. The bushranging section, which sits in the middle, is based on a true story, which Koch extends into an exploration of a utopian society created in an isolated valley. The human tensions in such a situation are well developed and intriguing. The 1950s story involves a young man—an aspiring artist working in his first job at a local paper—who contacts his great-uncle, a lawyer, in order to get his father out of trouble. A deep friendship develops between the two, and the great-uncle continues to help his great-nephew, both in his artistic pursuits and in the aid of a friend who is charged with murder. I enjoyed both stories, but what I loved best was Koch’s writing. He is one of the country’s most deliberate wordsmiths and his evocation of Hobart, its outer suburbs and its surrounds is sublime. Some might say his writing style is old-fashioned but I find it refreshing.

Clive Tilsley is the owner and director of Fullers Bookshop with almost 40 years in the trade

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews