Lost Voices

by Christopher J. Koch

Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Christopher Koch returns with a remarkable novel of gripping narrative power.

Young Hugh Dixon believes he can save his father from ruin if he asks his estranged great-uncle Walter - a wealthy lawyer who lives alone in a Tasmanian farmhouse passed down through the family - for help. As he is drawn into Walter′s rarefied world, Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the mid nineteenth century.

Walter's father, Martin, was living in the house when it was raided by members of an outlaw community run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia. But like later societies with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent dictator. Twenty-year-old Martin's sojourn in the Valley as Wilson's disciple has become an obsession with Walter Dixon: one which haunts his present and keeps the past tantalizingly close.

As Walter encourages Hugh's ambition to become an artist, and again comes to his aid when one of Hugh's friends is charged with murder, the way life's patterns repeat themselves from one generation to another becomes eerily apparent.

Dramatic, insightful and evocative, Lost Voices is an intriguing double narrative that confirms Koch as one of our most significant and compelling novelists.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Historical Fiction, Historical, Tasmania, Book Club

480 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Christopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. For a good deal of his life he was a broadcasting producer, working for the ABC in Sydney. He has lived and worked in London and elsewhere overseas. He has been a fulltime writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels, many of which are translated in a number of European countries. One of his novels, The YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, was made into a film by Peter Weir and was nominated for an Academy Award. He has twice won the Miles Franklin award for fiction: for THE DOUBLEMAN and HIGHWAYS TO A WAR. In 1995 Koch was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 36 hours. Could not put it down. To say I'm a fan of Koch's is an understatement. The Double Man, Year of Living Dangerously, Highways to a War, and Out of Ireland are three of my favourite books. His last novel The Memory Room didn't impress me as much however. But this one is back to his compelling best. Such a wonderful story tellers. Characters are never flat although sometimes verging on caricatures. He does telegraph his punches a bit with his depictions of "baddies". Having said that, I was gripped by the two stories he weaves together. Not the first time he's used this device, but I think been really well executed here. You can't hear the mechanics grinding, in other words. Similarly, the themes of family secrets and double lives are explored again. The background detail of 1950s New Town and his family's struggles and relationships are wonderful. And the escape from Port Arthur and subsequent adventures in Utopian "Nowhere Valley" are handled so skillfully. I loved this book. I recommend him to anyone.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lost Voices is the seventh novel by Australian author, Christopher Koch. When Jim Dixon makes a serious error of judgement that could affect the whole family, his son, Hugh secretly goes to Walter Dixon, the great-uncle he has never met, to ask for help. He gets quite a bit more than he bargained for. As well as providing aid, his great-uncle becomes a source of inspiration, a patron and the revealer of a fascinating piece of family history: the story of Walter’s father, Martin Dixon’s involvement with a pair of notorious Tasmanian bushrangers. The novel is divided into three parts: the third person narration of Martin’s story is nested within the first-person narration of the relevant events in Hugh’s life. The lack of inverted commas denoting speech is only momentarily distracting as Koch’s text ensures there is no ambiguity about the speaker. This is a novel that contains many parallels, echoes, or recurring themes, both between the two stories and within them: an appeal for help to a richer man; a father favouring one child over another; the patronage of an artist; the articulation of individual concepts between like minds; true friendship; men who have no respect for women; hypnotic power; and younger man/older woman relationships. Koch touches on the concepts of beauty, Utopia, Gnosticism and the nature of evil. His characters are well rounded and their interactions are realistic and often moving. Koch’s plot is original and events like prison escapes, shoot-outs and a gripping court trial all keep the reader enthralled. His rendering of mood and scene is skilful and his extensive research is apparent on every page. The reader may well wonder how much of the author’s personal experience is involved. This novel is filled with beautiful prose: “We grew silent, and watched the afternoon light thicken and turn wheat-coloured over the roofs and the river and the hills; over the district that contained the mysteries of childhood, and that hidden joy at the heart of things that Bob and I had run after as boys, holding out our hands.” is but one example of this. This is Koch’s last book and a fitting testament to a fine author. A wonderful read.

[Lesley Moseley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe 4 1/2 stars as I really enjoy this interesting, fast paced style of writing. I know a bit about the area it is set in, and it's beautifully described. The characters are also very well-drawn and their voices are feel very time related, authentic. GREAT WRITER.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Late in life, I’ve come to the view that everything in our lives is part of a pre-ordained pattern.’

This novel is organised as three books: the first and third are the fictional memoir of Hugh Dixon in the 1950s, the second looks back a century earlier to a part of the life of Hugh's great-grandfather Martin Dixon. The two are connected by Hugh's great-uncle Walter, and elderly lawyer living alone at Leyburn Farm, owned by the Dixon family since colonial times and now being encroached upon by the suburban sprawl of Hobart, Tasmania.

Hugh's father, Jim, has been estranged from his family for some years. In late 1950, then aged 17, Hugh approaches his great-uncle for financial help to try to save his father from ruin. As he cycles to Leyburn Farm, to ask a favour of a great-uncle he barely remembers meeting, Hugh remembers stories he has heard about members of the Dixon family.

`The past is a dimension that can't be escaped, however hard we try.'

Hugh and Walter meet regularly: Walter encourages Hugh to follow his dreams, while sharing his knowledge of the past. Both Walter and Hugh wonder about Martin Dixon's experience as a twenty year old with a bushranger called Lucas Wilson.

Martin's story takes us back to 1854, when Tasmania is still both a colonial outpost and a penal colony. Martin's experiences both at home at Leyburn Farm, and in Nowhere Valley with Lucas Wilson and Liam Dalton and the small community they lead - aspiring to Utopia- show aspects of both the best and worst of colonial life. There are echoes between the two centuries: characters have their counterparts, there are some similarities between relationships formed or desired, and each of the narratives contains a character best described as evil. While the narrative strands connect through Walter Dixon and form their own sense because of him, it is a plausible connection because the two narratives are quite separate. As readers, we are led to wonder about Martin Dixon and while the second book provides us with answers, it does so independently of Hugh and Walter.

`If we live long enough, the people and places belonging to our youth begin to take on the quality of fiction.'

In the final book, Hugh is reunited with a friend from his childhood. When that friend is charged with murder, Walter is able to help. Tasmania's past is never far away: yesterday's prison can be today's courtroom.

`My great-uncle was one of those individuals who harbour two opposite spirits inside themselves: spirits never to be reconciled.'

I enjoyed this novel immensely - especially the second book about Martin Dixon's experiences. The descriptions of suburban Hobart in the 1950s, of Port Arthur, Hobart and surrounds in 1854 took me there. I could see the trams in Hobart, and hear the dogs at Eaglehawk Neck. For me, the setting is not incidental to the story - it is central to it. As Hugh Dixon observes:

`A narrative of youth has no final ending; it must simply be broken off at a point that seems natural. I've now come close to that point.'

And later:

`What remains of those who've gone? Fading images of their faces - even the face of my wife - growing ever less distinct. Lost voices, repeating a few disjointed words that have lodged in my memory: voices of those I knew, and of others, like Wilson and Dalton and my great-grandfather Martin Dixon, whom I met at one remove.'

Apart from `The Year of Living Dangerously', I've yet to read Mr Koch's other books. They are now on my reading list.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a local Tasmanian, I am particularly picky about novels set in the state. This one was set in late 1940s/early 1950s Hobart (New Town, Moonah and Montrose) where budding artist, Hugh Dixon, links up with his estranged great-uncle Walter, a lawyer who mentors him and tells him the story of Walter’s father’s involvement in 1854 with Lucas Wilson and Liam Dalton (a Martin Cash clone) and their futile attempt to establish a utopia in the Collinsvale bush. There are connections between past and present, as a childhood friend of Hugh is unjustly charged with murder, but it is the authentic local setting that adds so much in a masterfully-written account.

[Jim Rimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me Lost Voices dripped with melancholia, partially because I grew up in the obscure corner of the world in which it is set but also because I variously shared aspirations and life experiences with a number of the central characters.

It all felt very close.

This is the last work by a great Australian author, giving the sense of a storyteller coming full circle. It weaves through time, imbued with a nostalgia for youth and the echoes of worlds long passed.

An enjoyable read and easily recommendable.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Koch is brilliant at exploring charismatic personalities. This is territory that he has covered in a number of his books, including The Memory Room which I reviewed on this blog back in 2009. In that book, even though the character Vincent is a nerd, he is able to attract friends, and more importantly, loyalty. Here in Lost Voices Koch shows us the lure of the charismatic leader, and the effect he has on men in search of a mentor. It’s superbly well done.

The choice of narrative perspective enables the reader to see the effect close up. In Parts 1 and 3, the narrator is Hugh Dixon looking back on his youth from old age. He shares his memories of people both as he viewed them in the past and also from a more mature vantage point. He recognises what impressed him then, and what faults and idiosyncracies he was able to identify both then and now. His is a generous perspective: he tends to think well of people and in most circumstances, to be forgiving.

Hugh’s father Jim Dixon is one of many self-made men in this novel: during the Depression his brother George was favoured with a university education which led to a career in the legal profession, but Jim – brought up with expectations of joining Hobart’s ruling class – had to leave school at sixteen. He sustains his resentment long afterwards: when he has through hard work and study succeeded in qualifying as an accountant and is offered a job in the family business, he repudiates it. He has too much pride to associate with those who treated him unfairly. But when he lands in trouble because of the influence of a charismatic punter and urgently needs £100 to avoid ruin, he is too ashamed to ask for help from the only one who could offer it. It is Hugh who has the courage to ask, and he goes on to forge a long-term relationship with his great-uncle Walter as a powerful mentor. Pride and shame are key motifs in Lost Voices.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/04/11/lo...

[Carolyn]

Another novel from a favourite author – it didn’t capture my imagination as did his previous novels, particularly Highways to a War and The Memory Room but it kept my interest in the subject of Tasmanian convicts and bushrangers and in how people can rekindle interest in the past and in ‘lost voices’. Koch has a deft style and is able to uncover layers of memory and meaning.

[Joanne Dwyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Odd read really. One section I liked the rest I could have done without. Perhaps just telling one good story rather than three would have been better. Giving it one star because I can't get a handle on rating it. Too perplexing.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating of particular interest for those interested in Australian history

[Carofish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous writing and I really enjoyed reading about some of the history of Tasmania. Knowing that Christopher Koch has died in September , the passing of Uncle Walter was quite poignant.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel tells the story of members of the Dixon family through three narratives about a century apart.

In an effort to help his father who has fallen into debt, young Hugh Dixon bravely approaches his Uncle Walter, a wealthy lawyer, from whom the family has been estranged. Rather than being rejected, Walter is able to assist and Hugh begins to form a bond with Walter who recognises the boy’s artistic talent and also tells him something of a sensational tale from the 1850s involving his own father, Martin.

It is 1854. When the notorious bushranger Lucas Wilson and his partner Liam Dalton (a recent escapee from Port Arthur) raid the Dixon farm, Martin, a budding journalist, asks to go with them in order to write Wilson’s story for the newspapers. Wilson agrees, but blindfolds Martin on the route to their secret hideaway. Roy Griffin is another recent recruit and escapee who has ulterior motives. Martin discovers that Nowhere Valley is more than just a refuge for criminals and that Wilson plans a self-sufficient Utopia. Martin has more than a scoop, and finds himself increasingly drawn into Wilson’s schemes and dreams, until Griffin causes an upheaval that results in tragedy.

The third narrative returns to the early 1950s as Hugh is on his way to recognition as an artist and meets Bob Wall, an old friend from childhood who is also an artist. He helps him find a job with an illustrator and cartoonist, Max Fell, who has a secret sinister side. When Bob is arrested for murder, Hugh asks his Uncle Walter to defend him.

I was thoroughly captivated by this book and wish I’d known about it previously (published 2012). If you have visited Tasmania and know its history, you will have the benefit of a deeper understanding of this story in which a family and community struggle to shrug off the darkness of the past.

Although extraordinarily beautiful in places, the island still can’t avoid echoes from history in its inky black waters of Macquarie Harbour with its rocky portal of Hell’s Gates, the ruinous outposts of misery that were Sarah Island and Port Arthur with its Isle of the Dead, the solitary confinement remnants at the Cascade Women’s Factory, the roar of ocean breakers that roll across the world from South America and incessantly pound the West Coast – an infernal and eternal booming sound that could send you mad – contrasted with that unique silence of the mountains and the primeval forests that have witnessed the unspeakable. All of this might be felt if you have sensitivity to such things and this last novel by Christopher Koch captures this superbly through its characterisations and prose.

This passage from the third narrative:

“The past is a dimension that can’t be escaped, however hard we try. Old Van Diemen’s Land had claimed Bob Wall: that past which most people here preferred not to think about, just as they preferred to forget their convict ancestors. Only the present was thought to be clean and harmless: modern was good. But when Bob entered the Hobart Gaol, the bland and transient present was dissolved. He was locked not just in prison, but in the nineteenth century. It had never gone away, that sombre old century; instead it was hidden and preserved behind the high sandstone walls in Campbell Street, waiting for recruits from outside.”


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[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Koch is arguably Australia's finest living novelist, and probably in the front rank of prose stylists this country has ever produced. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, he is perhaps most famous for his book The year of living dangerously, which was made into a successful film.

There are themes that appear regularly throughout his writing, and Lost Voices deals with two of these. Koch is Tasmanian - his family were very early settlers (not convicts) - and his love of both the countryside and the towns of this island state recur throughout his books, and take centre stage here. Koch is also fascinated by the idea of evil, and the thin threads that society hangs on: a theme he explored in The Doubleman, and one he covers again here.

Lost Voices is a book of two stories, concerning the one family, that cross one hundred years of Tasmania's history. We are first introduced not to a person, but to a suburb of Hobart in the early '50s. Koch's descriptive writing is of the highest quality, never overwrought or baroque, and yet he manages to capture a scene perfectly and transport the reader exactly to a particular time and place.

We then meet the teenage Hugh Dixon who, by a deft plot device, soon meets his estranged Great-Uncle Walter, lawyer and aesthete. Hugh and Walter soon realize they both have an interest in art, which sparks a friendship. Hugh also meets Walter's secretary/housekeeper, Mrs. Moran. Bob Hall, Hugh's schoolboy friend who also is interested in drawing, enters and leaves Hugh's world, as he runs away from his abusive Father and ends up in Reform School.

On his weekly visits to Walter, Hugh is introduced to art and the greater world, and some family secrets. Walter lives in the Dixon's ancestral home, Leyburn Farm, and Hugh is told that the famous bushrangers Wilson and Dalton had raided there in the previous century, and that Walter's father Martin (Hugh's Great Grandfather), had for a time run off with their gang.

We are then transported, in the middle section of the book, back to 1854 where we meet Dalton and Griffin as they escape Port Arthur, and make their way back to Nowhere Valley, where Wilson has his hideout. Dalton is Wilson's Lieutenant, and Griffin importunes Dalton to be allowed to join the gang. On their way back to the Valley they raid Leyburn Farm, where we are shown that Dalton is a gentleman highwayman, and we also see that Griffin is something less than that. It is here that Martin approaches Dalton with the idea that he ride off with them to Nowhere Valley to write the story of Wilson for the Hobart newspaper. Dalton agrees.

The journeys through the Tasmanian bush that are undertaken in this section of the book are evoked with genius by Koch - the sights, smells, sounds, weather are all brought to the reader with immediacy and delicacy and thoughtfulness to the story - we see the country through Martin's eyes, so descriptions of the flora don't include the names of the plants, as Martin would not know them. The grandeur of Tasmania grips the reader through these pages.

When Martin and Griffin arrive in Nowhere Valley, they are greeted with a situation they weren't expecting. Far from being the camp of outlaws bent on rapine and pillage, Nowhere Valley is a village of people working on the land, dedicated to a better life. Wilson is the undisputed and charismatic leader of the community, who, with nods to More's Utopia, is trying to build a better society; spurning what has gone before in a bid to create happiness on Earth. As he describes to Martin, the raiding and stealing are only to gather what they can't make themselves, and is something Wilson hopes with time will no longer be needed. He also hopes - at least in public - that his iron-fisted rule will also fade away, although he expresses to Martin his doubts that human nature will make it so, pointing out that even More had envisaged a Prince ruling over society.

Martin is torn between his attraction to Wilson's ideals, and his realization that the reality of Nowhere Valley falls far short of them. For a time he considers staying in the Valley and becoming a follower of Wilson.

Griffin has also spent time with Wilson. Dalton, and Wilson's mistress Frances, and to a certain extent Martin sees evil in Griffin, but Wilson is fascinated by his Gnostic theories, and his apparent ability to speak with the world of the spirits. There is always the lingering doubt that Griffin's theories are little more than cover for his wish to engage in whatever acts he likes. He, along with some other cronies, chafe against the rule of the Community whereby only Wilson, Dalton and a few others go raiding down to civilization.

On one occasion when Wilson and Dalton are off raiding, Griffin and his men take their chance, raid the armoury, steal a young girl and head off. On Wilson's return, he, Dalton and Martin track Griffin to a remote farm, where Griffin has committed more outrages on the woman living there, after killing her husband (this after raping the girl stolen from the Community). After a gunfight, both Griffin and Wilson are dead (Griffin shot by Martin). This means the end of the Community, as it has been becoming clear to the reader that it was only the force of Wilson's personality that kept it together. Even his mistress Frances knew that, and had expressed it to Martin. Wilson's dying words to Martin "keep faith with the hills", are a desperate plea that go unanswered.

We are then taken back to modernity, Hugh has left school, gone to art school with the help of Walter, and has his first job as an illustrator on the Hobart newspaper, while starting out on a career as an artist. He re-unites with his childhood friend Bob and gets him a job with Max Fell, a freelance artist and photographer he knows vaguely. Bob soon takes a dislike to Fell, who is revealed as a lecher. When one of the models used by Fell is found raped and murdered, Bob, who has just become engaged, is charged with murder. Hugh entreats Walter to defend him, which he does, and draws an acquittal from the jury by implicating Fell in the murder.

Intertwined with this is Hugh's affair with Moira Moran, Walter's secretary - a widow approaching middle-age. While Moira knows that it is something fleeting, Hugh clings desperately to the idea that it is true love, and is devastated when the inevitable happens.

Again, Koch weaves his web in this section of the book with his descriptive powers - the scene where Hugh is painting of a portrait of Moira, which leads to the beginning of the affair, is masterful writing, as is his depiction of character in the form of Bob, Max and Walter.

The book ends with the death of Walter, who's invocation to Hugh "keep faith with the hills", binds the two stories together.

If you have never read any Koch you should, and Lost Voices would be a good place to start. With it's limpid description, vivid landscapes and gripping narratives, it's the work of a novelist in control of his craft.

Highly recommended.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Ian Durant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe this was Christopher Koch’s final novel, published in 2012.He died a year later, aged 81. It has all the narrative propulsion which I have enjoyed in his other books. There is also an authenticity to his descriptions of growing up in 1950’s Hobart, a pressure cooker of small town island life with limited life and love prospects and the parental conflicts which existed as a result of expectations and hopes not met on all sides. And there were some well researched descriptions of convict life in the 19th century. It is a great yarn and a riveting read which blends the real-life lived with the imaginative. The only reason for a 3 star not 4 star is that I found the style of writing a bit dated. I think this is to do with shortening attention spans spawning a less florid style. The mutual debates amongst escaped convicts in one century and the lawyer and his great nephew in the 1950’s about literature and philosophy did not really strike me as persuasive. Or maybe that was just me - I grew up in 1970’s rural Scotland and found no one to discuss the revelations that existentialism and modernist literature had on me. Perhaps I wasn’t lucky enough with those around me!

[Susan Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this leisurely and at times gripping read. I'd just finished reading Truth and found Koch's prose to be the complete opposite style to Peter Temple's sparse, cryptic fast style. Both have merit, depends on what mood you are in I guess. I found it a little hard to to get into and the art and spiritual themes did not interest me greatly but the bushranger and cartoonist murderer stories were interesting and I enjoyed the fact they shed light on past eras in my town even though the plot and characters were fictional.

[Dulcie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot within plot...but neither of them was strong enough. The final shift to " deep history" was jarring and inconsequential.
Some of the characterisations were certainly strong; but not enough was done with them.

[Amanda Vallis Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm surprised that this author is as awarded as he is. I found his writing style to be amateurish and immature. The last third of the book I skim read. I won't be going back for any more of Mr Koch's work.

[Nella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book group read

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I literally haven't read any CJ Koch since 'The year of living dangerously' was shoved down my throat for the HSC. I enjoyed the book for the most part but it really sped up the last 100 or so pages.

[Gavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully evocative writing style & an interesting storyline. Loved the multi-layered approach & the themes of outsiders, artists & whether people can be truly evil. It was also quite an entertaining page-turner of a book, which can't be said for all "literature".

[Kangelani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful! What a story-teller. It ticked all boxes for me; history, Tasmania, excellent plot, enough action to keep me reading, great characters, etc.

[Sally906 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Opening lines: ‘…Late in life, I’ve come to the view that everything in our lives is part of a pre-ordained pattern. Unfortunately it’s a pattern to which we’re not given a key…’


The biggest problem I had with LOST VOICES was the punctuation. When the characters speak to each other there was no punctuation to indicate they were speaking; and it drove me to distraction! I guess as an award winning literary figure such as the late Mr Koch should know more about writing than me – but he obviously chose to ignore the practice of speech marks.

So he dropped a level in my estimation straight up. No punctuation, no ‘A’, no exceptions (because he is not the first writer to have a book published with punctuation as an option). Now I can almost hear all the literary highbrows reeling in horror at my high-handed and plebeian attitude to a true literary work of art. But my care factor is zero. I like punctuation. Punctuation mistakes happen all the time, and this is fine, because at least they are trying. But to have no punctuation, that is wrong plain wrong.

End of rant.

LOST VOICES consists of three books within one. The first and the last are both narrated by Hugh Dixon, firstly in the 1950s looking back at his late teens and then the last book is also in the 1950s but is his present. The middle book however is set around 100 years earlier and tells us a portion of history that involved Hugh's great-grandfather Martin Dixon. The link between all the books is Hugh’s Great Uncle Walter, Martin Dixon’s grandson. Hugh meets Walter, and elderly lawyer, when he is 17 when Hugh goes to his great-uncle for financial help to try to save his father from ruin. Hugh’s father has been estranged from his family for years. Walter takes a shine to Hugh and encourages him to follow his dreams. Walter teaches Hugh his family history which is how the reader gets transported in time back to 1854 and Martin Dixon's experience as a twenty year old with an enigmatic bushranger called Lucas Wilson who tries to set up build a utopia but rules it with a ready gun; murder and violence stalk the pages of the second book. Murder and violence stalk the pages of the final book as well. A childhood friend of Hugh’s returns to Hobart and is charged with murder. Once again Hugh turns to Walter, this time asking Walter to defend his friend. At this point the reader suddenly clicks that the patterns of the past revisit each generation.

“…The past is a dimension that can't be escaped, however hard we try…”

Sons are estranged from fathers, older men guide and support and when crimes are committed justice is served. The methods of justice, and the outcomes, in the two centuries may be different but the similarities are there. I did enjoy reading LOST VOICES for the most part. I especially loved the Martin Dixon section, with a daring convict escape from the notorious Port Arthur penal settlement (based on the only recorded successful escape of Martin Cash), dastardly doings and a deliciously evil man who sent shivers up my spine. Overall, LOST VOICES is beautifully written and the words just flowed over me bringing each scene alive in my mind. It is not a fast paced story however there is action and there is certainly passion and drama. It is sad to know that just when I have discovered him he has gone. I will certainly look up and read his other works.

[Don Alcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an evocative, absorbing book, with an intriguing double narrative. It's divided into three parts, with the middle section describing a story set in 1854 of two escapees from Tasmania’s Port Arthur who return to their secret mountain hideout – but not before meeting a young Martin Dixon, who convinces them to let him accompany them to tell their tale. In the first and third sections of the book we follow Hugh Dixon, Martin’s great grandson, one hundred years later. If it were not for this father’s trouble, Hugh would not have met his great uncle and learned the story of his grandfather.

Essentially, it's a book about relationships, both past and present. There are other parallels – young men’s relationships with older women, the treatment of women and, importantly the concept of truly evil men. Superbly written by one of Australia's greatest literary authors.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the coming of age and life of Hugh Dixon set in Hobart in the mid-20th century; and it is also about the coming of age of society on the magical island of Tasmania a hundred years earlier. Christopher Koch, considered by many during his lifetime to be one of Australia's greatest living writers, died in 2013 shortly before this last novel was published. Koch is probably best known as the author of The Year of Living Dangerously. He wrote other novels including Out of Ireland and Highways to War. Lost Voices opens in 1953 when eighteen year old Hugh Dixon discovers that his father has embezzled a hundred pounds from his employer and that the family faces financial ruin. Noting the helplessness of his always slightly defeatist father and his mother's worried face, young Hugh takes matters into his own hands and cycles out to 'Montrose" the historic paternal home of his father's estranged family. Great-Uncle Walter agrees to see Hugh, discovers that the boy reminds him of himself at the same age and takes an almost immediate liking to him. Hugh leaves with a cheque and an explanatory note for his father, thereby resolving the family financial dilemma. The outcome of Hugh's initiative is that Great-Uncle Walter thereafter takes an interest in him, encouraging Hugh in his artistic ambitions and also, importantly for the story, revealing the family history regarding an ancestor who, in 1854, went to live with a gang of bushrangers led by a man with Utopian ideals who governed by the gun. Koch writes with a lyrical beauty that is hard to match.Read more ›
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[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seemed to be two books in one, with a few lose threads connecting the two.

The narrator is looking back at his life in Hobart, first as a child and then as a young man and an aspiring painter. He meets his great uncle who relates the family story that connected his father with bushrangers.

The story of the bushrangers could have been a novella, well written with descriptions of life in the 1850s, and of the hills and valleys around Hobart. This was where the book was most interesting.

There were other links between the two stories; of good people accused of being bad, of religion, nature, the presence of evil in man, of lost opportunities and of love.

I was left wondering on the format of the book, it's two stories and whether it could have been presented in another way. But I haven't won numerous awards for writing nor even written a book, so maybe Christopher Koch has outwitted me on this one.

[Chris Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Koch is criminally under-appreciated outside of Australia. One of the truly great writers in the past 40 years, his work is almost unknown in America aside from The Year of Living Dangerously. And even that is largely appreciated as a film.

Highways to a War and Out of Ireland are Booker-quality. Perhaps Koch's passion for storytelling doomed him in the lit-crit crowd, but his novels work on multiple levels. When I first traveled to Australia I asked a friend to recommend a novel that captures the essence of Australia. He recommended My Brother Jack, a great book but a novel in name only. If asked the same question, I would point an interested reader to Koch or, possibly, Kate Grenville.

Lost Voices doesn't quite match up to Koch's best, but it is a fine piece of work that ties together narrative threads from the mid 19th and 20th centuries, art and law, love and duty. Highly recommended, if you can find a copy.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lost Voices is Christopher Koch’s last novel. Setting the scene in Glenorchy, Tasmania and the nearby bushlands, he uses the most exquisite language to paint a vivid picture of suburban Hobart in the 1940s & 50s and the rugged bushranger country that was in its place one hundred years previously.

It tells two separate but similar stories of idealistic young men, their relationships with their respective mentor figures, and ultimately their transition into awareness of the darker side of humanity. In each case, they witness something to aspire to in their mentors as they each refuse to allow evil to prevail. The interesting aspect is that these two narratives take place 100 years apart from one another, and one of these heroic mentors is a bushranger, a wanted criminal.

>>Please visit my blog to read the rest of this review!

[Paul Lockman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received the book as a Christmas present and hadn’t read anything by the author before despite him having won two Miles Franklin Awards.

I did like the book without raving about it. I enjoyed the middle section the most. I found the writing a little stiff, clinical perhaps, which made it hard for me to warm to and care about the characters in a meaningful way. In the third section I didn't see the point of relating the events as the elderly Hugh Dixon looking back some 50 years to his time as a teenager in the 1950s. I felt it made the writing and the story a little clunky and awkward.

It's split into three sections and basically involves elements of the family history of the Dixons: the first revolves around Hugh Dixon a teenager in 1950s Hobart, Tasmania. The second section is set in the mid 1800s and Martin Dixon is the central character along with two bushrangers Lucas Wilson and Liam Dalton. The third section returns to Hugh Dixon in 1950s Hobart.

[Sophie Masson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping, lyrical, elusive and disturbing novel, Lost Voices plays with time, transporting us back not only to narrator Hugh Dixon's own youth in the 1940's and 50's but also into the 19th century and the lost world of bushrangers and utopian ideas. Filled with the beauty and strangeness of the Tasmanian landscape as well as the strange and unusual fates of the vivid characters who populate it, as well as by a tantalising sense of the metaphysical, Lost Voices is an extraordinary novel by one of the greatest of Australian writers, still at the height of his powers at 80 years old. Highly recommended.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

i very much enjoyed this book, the first Christopher Koch (2x Miles Franklin winner) book i have read. Of course i knew his name and that he was a modern Australian writer but our paths had not crossed. Very engaging characters, a central conceit well executed, evocative descriptions, some nuances and characteristics nicely captured, well constructed + plotted. Very much the product of a polished writer. Why this book did not get more commercial support in 2013 (when shortlisted for the Prime Ministers literary Awards) is a surprise. I found it in the bargain bin in my local shopping centre. It deserves better than that.