The Memory Room (Bookring)

by Christopher J. Koch | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0224084933 Global Overview for this book
Registered by freelunch of Cairns, Queensland Australia on 6/9/2008
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7 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by freelunch from Cairns, Queensland Australia on Monday, June 9, 2008
Hardcover
432 pages, 825 grams

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'What is a spy? Are they born, or are they made?' With these words, Vincent Austin analyses his future occupation. Some spies are made, he says, but his kind is born. He is devoted to secrecy for its own sake.

Vincent is orphaned early, and his boyhood in Tasmania is spent with an elderly aunt. His fascination with secrecy and espionage - and much else besides - is shared to an uncanny degree by Erika Lange, daughter of a post-World War German immigrant. She too has lost her mother, and she and Vincent see themselves as twin spirits, inhabiting a shared, platonic world of fantasy and ritual.

At University, Vincent aims to enter Foreign Affairs - an ambition shared by his easygoing friend Derek Bradley. However, in his final year, Vincent is recruited by ASIS - Australia's overseas secret intelligence service - and his adolescent dream becomes reality. Erika becomes a journalist, eventually entering the overseas service as a press officer. She is an attractive and magnetic woman, but her emotional life is chaotic.

She, Vincent and Bradley meet again in 1982, when they are in their thirties, and have all been posted to the Australian Embassy in Beijing. Here, Erika and Bradley begin an affair which is ultimately doomed to fail. At the same time, Vincent attempts an espionage coup which ends in disaster for himself and Bradley.

Both men are expelled from China, and are based in Canberra, where Vincent is confined to the ASIS Registry: the 'memory room' of the book's title. This is the year of Star Wars, and the final phase of the Cold War.

Erika, also returning to Australia, becomes a television journalist, and enjoys a period of national prominence. The fantasies of youth have become reality for Erika and Vincent, and lead to a tragic climax for them both. It is left to Bradley, who inherits Vincent's diaries, to contemplate their fate.

Although The Memory Room deals with espionage, its aims go far beyond those of a thriller. A psychological study of a brilliant but eccentric secret intelligence operative, it is also an exploration of the mystical nature of secrecy itself, and of the consequences of a shared obsession.

Journal Entry 2 by freelunch from Cairns, Queensland Australia on Monday, June 9, 2008
This book forms part of DrCris' Miles Franklin Shortlist Challenge (2008)

the reading order for this book will be:

1. freelunch
2. DrCris
3. tqd
4. Fleebo
5. livrecache
6. FreePages <--arrived here 1st September 2009
7. ShilpaM
8. back to freelunch

anyone in Australia wishing to join the end of this bookring is welcome to do so, please PM me to have your name added to the list.

other books in this challenge include:
Love Without Hope - Landscape of Farewell - Sorry - The Time We Have Taken - The Fern Tattoo

Journal Entry 3 by freelunch from Cairns, Queensland Australia on Monday, August 4, 2008
I enjoyed this book. some of it is told via diary entries in which I feel the narration is too detailed to be believable (as a diary entry) but the story was excellent.

posted this morning to DrCris...

Journal Entry 4 by DrCris from Templestowe, Victoria Australia on Tuesday, August 12, 2008
This arrived a couple of days ago. This copy is really nicely printed, with a nice page-edge feature. I look forward to reading it. Unfortunately, I am reading very slowly at the moment, so there are 3 books ahead of this one. I will get to it as soon as I can.

Journal Entry 5 by DrCris from Templestowe, Victoria Australia on Sunday, September 28, 2008
Just an update to say I started reading this last night. DH let me sit in the corner and read a couple of chapters, as I was having trouble getting into the narrative in the midst of the bustle!

Journal Entry 6 by DrCris from Templestowe, Victoria Australia on Monday, October 20, 2008
Wow! This was a great book, which I really enjoyed. 2/2 Miles Franklin books so far, and both wonderful. I lapped this one up, and spent weekends tryign to scrabble time away from the kids so I could read more. I guess I was a little disappointed with the soft ending with respect to Vincent. I think more could have been made of that, but it was otherwise very enjoyable.

This inspires me to return to the 3 CJ Koch books I have unread on my shelves.

Journal Entry 7 by tqd from Sydney CBD, New South Wales Australia on Monday, October 27, 2008
Thanks, DrCris for passing this on! I've been looking forward to this for some time (ever since Marieke Hardy disliked it on "First Tuesday Bookclub"; I rarely agree with her tastes in books, although I do enjoy her as a TV presenter).

I've read two of the Miles Franklin books so far, and they were both excellent. I hope this one is in their league!

Journal Entry 8 by tqd from Sydney CBD, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Phew! Sorry for the loooong delay before reading this (the mental block of "too many bookrings, argh!" and summer), but once I started I found it hard to put down.

I enjoyed the tale very much, I liked the evocation of place (I've never been to Hobart or Bejing, but he got Canberra down to a T... or should that be a C?), especially China initially opening its doors to western business. I'd forgotten that there was a time when a car was rare in China or Beijing wasn't filled with entrepreneurs and modern artists. And that wasn't that long ago!

The plot was interesting as well (I think this might be the first time I've read a spy novel, although it's hardly a spy novel in its usual sense), although Erika peeved me somewhat. Her perfect beauty, her psychoticness, I dunno, she just came across as slightly one-dimensional, whereas Vincent and Derek were great characters, I found myself seeing myself in Derek first, then in Vincent... (Oh no! I think I just agreed with Marieke Hardy!)

I agree with freelunch, the detail in the diary entries was just too much, which is something that I find it hard to suspend my disbelief about. But it was good to change point of view, and see what was actually going on in Vincent's head from time to time. Glad we didn't have to spend any time in Erika's head.

I'll pass this onto Fleebo tonight at Bookdrinks! Thanks freelunch!

Journal Entry 9 by tqd at Sydney CBD, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Released 15 yrs ago (2/10/2009 UTC) at Sydney CBD, New South Wales Australia

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Passing on to Fleebo tonight at bookdrinks.

Happy reading!

Journal Entry 10 by Fleebo on Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Received from tqd. Thanks! What a cute label this book has.

Journal Entry 11 by Fleebo on Thursday, June 11, 2009
I found this book to be all right, but not much more than that. There were too many things about it that irritated me. The fancy page edges make it harder to riffle through the book looking for where you were up to, when your bookmark falls out... The diary entries may have been unconvincingly detailed, but that's always the case when an author resorts to this horrible device. (Who ever heard of a spy creating damning evidence against themselves like this, anyway? Apart from "Harriet the Spy" - but she was only 11.) And the stupid detail in the place names! Of course one should describe the setting, but throwing in hundreds of suburb and street names is entirely meaningless to anyone who doesn't know the city. What do I care whether something took place at this exact intersection, or the next one down, if I've never been there?
I didn't mind Vincent as a character, but Erika was a psychotic and a bore, and I didn't care about her at all, which kind of spoils the point of the book. The trouble with unbalanced people as main characters is that they never have meaningful motives. Perhaps if you are male then her sexiness is enough to make her interesting? I don't know. I didn't believe for a moment that she could be as hysterical as she was and still be such a success in her work.
Anyway, I seem to be the only one with a negative reaction so far. Onwards with the book, and hopefully it will meet with more people who enjoy it.

Journal Entry 12 by livrecache from Hobart, Tasmania Australia on Monday, June 29, 2009
Doesn't it always happen? Multiple bookrings at once. Still I'm not really complaining. Just commenting.

Thanks to freelunch for sharing, and to everyone who has helped this book on its way to me.

Journal Entry 13 by livrecache from Hobart, Tasmania Australia on Friday, August 28, 2009
I finished this book this evening, and my feelings were and are quite ambivalent. In general, I agree with Fleebo''s comments: way too much detail about street names and such. His detail about Hobart particularly irritated me. The geographic detail was spot on, but beyond that he described a Hobart that may have existed 30 years earlier. I don't know when Hobart lost its trams, but they certainly weren't there in 1970. The university he describes is the one my mother went to (although it's a really beautiful building, much better than the current campus). This made me question the veracity of other descriptions, although as TQD says, Canberra was spot on.
I found Erika tedious, one dimensional and predictable. The men's characterisation was much better, even if dated. And I too share doubts about people being able to be so detailed in their diaries. Nonetheless, I was drawn into the story, but in the end I felt it really hadn't gone anywhere. However, it was interesting and I'm glad to have read it.
Thank you for sharing, freelunch, I'll send it on its way next week.

Journal Entry 14 by livrecache at A BookCrosser, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases on Sunday, August 30, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (8/30/2009 UTC) at A BookCrosser, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases

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On its way to another bookcrosser. I hope you enjoy it.

Journal Entry 15 by FreePages from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Memory Room is in Canberra!

I'm looking forward to this, especially since on my way to work I drive past not only the current ASIO building, but also the building work for the NEW building!

Not sure how many "Memory Rooms" will be there ;-)

I've got quite a few bookrings with me at the moment, but I am getting through them. I hope to read this during September.

Thanks to livrecache for sending it on. :-)

Happy Wattle day everyone, first day of Spring!

Journal Entry 16 by FreePages from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Wednesday, November 18, 2009
This took me back, since it finishes up in 1984. I was just finishing year 12 and was living with my parents in a Canberra suburb that, was then, only a couple of years old - the Canberra suburb that I now live in was still sheep paddocks. Years before when I first started school it was at Red Hill Primary, one of the Canberra Suburbs mentioned in the book.
For those reasons and others, Koch's settings really interested me, I haven't been to Hobart or Beijing, but I am a long time Canberran and he did get up my goat, not with the Canberra jokes, heard them before and they're a bit of fun, but on page 257 "Its vistas were those of a particular kind of dream: the sort where one is lost, and searches without hope for release or perhaps for a reunion with people one cares about - only to find that one must move forever down endless unfamiliar roads, or through coldly empty, blue-lit streets..." My opinion "What a wank!".
Overall, the story held my interest, but I kept hoping it was going to get better.
I'm glad the book wasn't any longer, but I couldn't quite suspend disbelief on some of the story line.
I'm also glad we didn't have to spend time in Erika's head!
I was really hoping that the memory room was going to be where they were "debriefed" perhaps under an old-fashioned spot-light, something a bit more stylised and fanciful, so I could just accept it as a complete fiction. Instead, the author's attempts to make the plot and characters believable just didn't work for me.

I did have a bit of a giggle about one of the places Vince and Erika went to in the book, it was obviously a well known haunt in Canberra called "Tilley Devines", for some reason he decided to change the name and call it "Diamond Kate Carney's"! Sounds like try-hard wild-west. But he might be tipping his hat to Kate Leigh, who was Tilley's nemesis in underworld Sydney.

I'll PM ShilpaM and hope to have it in the mail by next week.

Journal Entry 17 by FreePages at Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (11/25/2009 UTC) at Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia

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Putting this book in the Post today.

Thanks for the opportunity to read it FreeLunch.

I hope you enjoy this more than me, Shilpa!

I did have quite a bit of fun picking holes in it though, naughty me :-)

Journal Entry 18 by ShilpaM from Rydalmere, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Arrived a couple of weeks ago but have had technical issues! I have so many books to be read that i'll have to pass this one. Sorry freelunch!

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