Customer Reviews

Highways To A War

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a big book, lumbering in structure, almost Victorian in the way it mucks about before settling into the yarn - but it winds up rich and troubling and moving and difficult to forget. Rather too obviously based on the life of famed war cameraman Neil Davis, it follows its hero from sylvan days in the hopfields of Tasmania to the warzones of Vietnam and Cambodia. The evocations of scented Asia, the journo/GI milieu, the chaos of battle are extremely strong.

Over time the hero's naive idealism is forged into - um, experienced idealism, as he comes to identify with the Cambodian people in particular. His ultimate fate is almost operatic in its awfulness.

The French have a word - sillage - which means the ineffable scent left in the air by a woman's passing. This book leaves a sillage. It is the gentle wash of sadness of the old survivors of those horrible South-East Asian wars, as they calculate the prices paid, and wonder at their meaning.

I recommend this book. It is like an old-fashioned Sunday roast - not necessarily the meal you'd choose, but richly satisfying at the end.

Christopher Koch writes about recent history in a way no other writer has done. He frequently is compared to Graham Greene, because they both write about espionage and moral confusion in exotic locales and because they both create unforgettable characters, but Koch approaches novel-writing from a different point of view. Both write beautiful, poetic prose. Koch, who rejects many contemporary literary vogues, nevertheless shows more interest in the structure of the novel than Greene. Greene was a troubled Catholic; Koch is a former Catholic, and either in spite or because of this, has a more clearly developed moral perspective. He uses it to lead his readers into one of the most ghastly moral cul de sacs of the 20th century, the triumph of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. His hero, Mike Langford, his greatest character, even greater than Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, is a Christlike figure -- literally, as is revealed in the tremendous conclusion to this wonderful book. More fashionable Australian writers, like the former advertising copywriter, Peter Carey, have been more adept at selling their work than Koch, but his books will be the ones that endure. Koch originally conceived Highways as a longer work, which would have included the story of Mike Langford's ancestor. The other half was later published as Out of Ireland. The first 40 or 50 pages of Highways provides a bridge between the two novels, which might be confusing to readers who don't read them as a pair.

'Highways to a War' is a wonder and interesting novel to read. It explores many intersting issues and concepts, including love, human suffering and friendships. It initially seems long and it is difficult to get into, but in time the reader gets drawn into the story and you won't want to put it down.

No better way to get a feeling for Vietnam and Cambodia during the war years than through the eyes and emotions of a news photographer. The great grandson of an 19th century adventurer, he is destined to follow human conflict in two of Asia's most beautiful countries. Once there he establishes his credential as the best in the trade, with a bravery and insight which shows the depth of his understanding of the two nations. After falling in love with a native woman he knows he can never leave, but once Saigon and Phnom Penh both fall his paradise is torn apart - and he goes missing. His story is told by a childhood friend who sets out to track him down, and who piece by piece uncovers his life of the previous 15 years.

Koch has the ability to to make you feel the heat, eat the food,and live the lives of the people in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is the war written from an Australian, not an American perspective, which opens up insights that no US citizen can make.

as an expat Australian and a prolific reader of fiction, I just want to remark that I think this the most moving piece of fiction to come out of Australia, ever. This is the only review I've ever written on Amazon, but this book has stayed with my over the years unlike any other work of oz fiction. I'd temper this by saying it is likely more appealing for a male rather than female audience, given the subject matter. Sweeping, embellished narrative that some might see as old fashioned. But just a terrific book, and a candidate for greatest ever novel by an Australian author.

You will feal like and want to be a wartime photographer after reading this book. Koch gives great detail from a different perspective on the war in Cambodia and Vietnam. The sotry is interestingly told by many characters

have read the book a few times and still holds my attention to the end . fictional people based about a very recent and lets face it ugly war!!!

Everything about this novel seeks to remove the reader from what has all the makings of a terrific story. At no point does Koch overcome his weaknesses 1) he has done this before and better in the Year of Living Dangerously 2) this photojournalist is an even more innocuous hero type than what he used in that novel; at no point is the thin "mysterious" character developed, Koch must want us to form no connection to him; our connection can only be to his lifestyle, a dangerous exotic one that obviously has seduced all the previous reviewers 3) the structure of the novel adds to removing the reader from the story - the inane old friend bumbling through the data is the feeling we get which translates into a heavyhanded style where Koch is constantly struggling against the third person third hand voice he forces himself to adopt. The whole first section is ruined after two good chapters by Koch insisting on going back into the narrators shared boyhood with the protaganist, a section as unrevealing and comical in its caricatures as it is boring. The next section is no better as you can still see Koch's frowning face as he tries to make a voice diary sound at once authentic and interesting. Sorry to say he fails and could have spent a bit more time on rewrites and restructuring. Indeed he spends great sections struggling with this question of whether to admit it is fiction and so build the prose or to keep striving to maintain the pretence of a pseudo-real memoir...it is a struggle never resolved and so the text is horribly compromised.

If Koch had to return to the material he obviously didn't get to fit in The Year Of Living Dangerously he could have at least tried a bit harder to disguise the fact that they were scraps! Poor show. If you really want a well written novel about photojournalism check out his earlier effort.

I take my hat off to Christopher J. Koch, and give five stars to the job he does in re-creating the ambiance of Saigon and Phnom Penh during the war. But when I average in the zero stars for the meandering 100 page introduction he gives his protagonist, the war correspondent Mike Langford, and the zero stars for credibility, he ends up with three. Credibility? NVA captains simply were not giving three day tours of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to war correspondents, then releasing them. And our protagonist's mad rush to return to Phnom Penh after it had fallen to anarchic, cutthroat barbarians? Sorry. But still, Koch evokes the "Sweet Bird of Youth" with his retrospective of Saigon street life. Memo to Christopher Koch: on your next book, please color code the pages containing the story, so we can more easily skip the filler.