Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Oh em gee. This is a famous Aussie novel I had never heard about. Probably the best writing I’ve come across in years. Maybe it just suits my taste but Koch fucking nails character and symbolism so much so you find yourself reading the supernatural stories as if they’re plot. You have to hang off his every word to not miss huge transitions in the characters.
The story is set in 1965 in Jakarta as President Sukarno starts to lose his hold on Indonesia as the country is pulled by political forces left and right. The characters are journalists from Australia and other commonwealth countries that are not only going through their shit but in complete unison with the country’s political turmoil. Billy Kwan is probably the most memorable character I’ve come across and developed so well you consider him a mate. Hamilton is a character we all know too well even now decades later we all no the inconsistent bohemians that can’t escape rigid conservative brainwashing of their past. Basically a fuck boi of 1965 completely unaware of his devastating short comings until he is forced to reconcile them.
The story is set in 1965 in Jakarta as President Sukarno starts to lose his hold on Indonesia as the country is pulled by political forces left and right. The characters are journalists from Australia and other commonwealth countries that are not only going through their shit but in complete unison with the country’s political turmoil. Billy Kwan is probably the most memorable character I’ve come across and developed so well you consider him a mate. Hamilton is a character we all know too well even now decades later we all no the inconsistent bohemians that can’t escape rigid conservative brainwashing of their past. Basically a fuck boi of 1965 completely unaware of his devastating short comings until he is forced to reconcile them.
adventurous
informative
3 out of 5 stars
The book is always better than the movie, right? Well, maybe. The movie and the novel are quite different, and each has its pros and cons.
The novel has a better explanation of the political situation, and the movie suffers from its Hollywood-esque qualities. However, the characters, especially Jill, are more likable in the movie. The narration of the book is also strange - Cook's perspective is 1st person omniscient, but he is also a normal character in the story. It is strange to not know anything about your narrator. The extra plotlines (Vera, etc) also bog down the main point of the novel.
Overall, I think the novel is well-written, but the movie is more accessible and focused.
The book is always better than the movie, right? Well, maybe. The movie and the novel are quite different, and each has its pros and cons.
The novel has a better explanation of the political situation, and the movie suffers from its Hollywood-esque qualities. However, the characters, especially Jill, are more likable in the movie. The narration of the book is also strange - Cook's perspective is 1st person omniscient, but he is also a normal character in the story. It is strange to not know anything about your narrator. The extra plotlines (Vera, etc) also bog down the main point of the novel.
Overall, I think the novel is well-written, but the movie is more accessible and focused.
reflective
medium-paced
I tried to read this book years ago and got lost in the details of Jakarta in 1965. Age and some experience of living in Indonesia have given me a better appreciation of the observations and the historical aspect.
Well written and a good story, although it went on a bit in parts. As always I was reaching for my red pen about two thirds of the way through...
The story (and the title) are familiar to many Australians who lived through the 80's, but I did not expect it to be so nuanced, or to become so invested in the characters, or in the whole theatre of political intrigue and manoeuvring.
Everything changes yet so much remains the same.
Well written and a good story, although it went on a bit in parts. As always I was reaching for my red pen about two thirds of the way through...
The story (and the title) are familiar to many Australians who lived through the 80's, but I did not expect it to be so nuanced, or to become so invested in the characters, or in the whole theatre of political intrigue and manoeuvring.
Everything changes yet so much remains the same.
Guy Hamilton is an Australian journalist who arrives in Indonesia to cover the growing unrest. He is 'adopted' by a Chinese-Australian dwarf cameraman Billy Kwan, whose friendship helps him find stories and make a name for himself. Billy is passionate and idealistic, though, and in his friendships tries to manipulate people to create the life he wants for them. He sets up for Guy to begin a relationship with British secretary Jill, and tries to convince the Western journalists that Indonesian president Sukarno's vision for the country is for the best. A beautifully written story that shows the two sides of life in a developing country.
okay.
learned some things.
good enough to finish and look at IMDB but not good enough to give to Mama :) or...maybe... hmmm.
learned some things.
good enough to finish and look at IMDB but not good enough to give to Mama :) or...maybe... hmmm.
I loved this book. I found the writing to be lyrical, and it is worth reading for the rich descriptions alone. I have been a fan of the movie since the 80s, but have never read the book until now. The character of Billy is much more mysterious, almost sinister, in the book than in the movie. The book has a richness and depth that I did not expect. It is well worth reading.
I'd purchased my Sphere (UK) edition in 1981, but don't reckon I ever read it. So it sat on my shelves for over four decades. This year I determined I'd read it.
And I wish I had earlier.
Obviously the Peter Weir film comes-to-mind, but it becomes obvious very rapidly that both Mel Gibson (Guy Hamilton) and Sigourney Weaver (Jill Bryant) were hopelessly miscast and looked nothing like the characters Christopher Koch had pictured. Linda Hunt though was absolutely Billy Kwan, and so deserving of her Oscar.
The novel though is so much deeper than the adapted movie. Kochs' writing, particularly in chapter 17 when Hamilton witnesses the intimate nature of the Indonesian wayang kulit - the shadow-play show, is quite beautiful.
There are of course differences. There's an additional and vital character - 'Cookie' - who interacts with most of the key characters and provides us with our narration and insight. He never made it into the movie and was replaced by Weir's cinematography. I have no real comprehension of Indonesia and I'm embarrassed by my lack-of-knowledge of its history and culture. Yet Koch does his best to enlighten his Western readers and we are better for it.
I'll probably read The Year of Living Dangerously again, but won't wait another four decades!
And I wish I had earlier.
Obviously the Peter Weir film comes-to-mind, but it becomes obvious very rapidly that both Mel Gibson (Guy Hamilton) and Sigourney Weaver (Jill Bryant) were hopelessly miscast and looked nothing like the characters Christopher Koch had pictured. Linda Hunt though was absolutely Billy Kwan, and so deserving of her Oscar.
The novel though is so much deeper than the adapted movie. Kochs' writing, particularly in chapter 17 when Hamilton witnesses the intimate nature of the Indonesian wayang kulit - the shadow-play show, is quite beautiful.
There are of course differences. There's an additional and vital character - 'Cookie' - who interacts with most of the key characters and provides us with our narration and insight. He never made it into the movie and was replaced by Weir's cinematography. I have no real comprehension of Indonesia and I'm embarrassed by my lack-of-knowledge of its history and culture. Yet Koch does his best to enlighten his Western readers and we are better for it.
I'll probably read The Year of Living Dangerously again, but won't wait another four decades!
We tend to mark the passage of time more in decades than years. Something about a larger number of days, months, and years gives us perspective. But some decades become lost. In the twentieth century, that is true, I think, for the 1920s and 1970s (and it may become true for the 1990s). The preceding and following decades tended to nibble into both the 1920s and 1970s. Like the 1920s and the aftermath of World War I, the first few years of the 1970s dealt with a lingering war, Vietnam, that had impacted not just the United States and Southeast Asia but the world at large. And like the 1920s again, with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the last year of the 1970s slipped back into a renewal of the Cold War leading to the ultimate demise of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. The 1970s, it seems actually existed for but a small span of time, for three or four years from 1975 to 1979. And right in the middle of them appeared Christopher J. Koch's novel, The Year of Living Dangerously.
Koch seems to realize he has managed to place his narrative in a unique time. Part of that is brought about through the skillful use of a narrator, "Cookie" (Koch himself). Why skillful? Because the setting of the story is 1965 Indonesia, during the last year of Sukarno's dictatorship. To tell it solely from that viewpoint would have made it too immediate. And the story needs distance. After all, it is told in a semi-nostalgic tone, which is also loaded with the wisdom of age and its accompanying skepticism rather than youthful disillusionment and cynicism. The 13 year gap provides that, as does shifting the point of view of the story from Guy Hamilton, the Australian journalist at the middle of it all, to Hamilton's friend and confidante, Cookie. It is all of a time with its particular era, because the late 1970s, or the "true 1970s," themselves reflected that same exhaustion and skepticism towards anything other than the personal in life.
That is the real story of The Year of Living Dangerously, the exit of the West from Asia, the knowledge that especially Southeast Asia would always have an unknowable quality that Westerners could never understand. Ever. Hamilton depicts that perfectly. His still lingering schoolboy character is built on the echoes of empire and Kipling. His desire to escape the humdrum existence of suburban Australia reflected in his reading of W. Somerset Maugham. And his thirst for adventure and danger in the novels of Ian Fleming's James Bond. These are the books that dominate his bookshelves. And probably the James Bond movies should be included, too. After all, when Hamilton is menacingly held underwater at a mountain top resort pool by a Russian agent, Vera, it is awfully reminiscent of Bambi and Thumper's attack on Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, which, by the way, just happened to be directed by Guy Hamilton.
At book's end, Koch's Guy Hamilton is ejected from Asia altogether. Left physically scared, he holds Asia as his true "home." But it can't be. As is also made clear towards the end, Hamilton belongs to a tradition rooted in the Aegean and flourishing in even further northern climes. Yes, there is clearly something of the dark and light of the Indonesian shadow puppet show in the clash between the two cultures. A hope for a merging of the Christian and the socialist, the Hindu and the Muslim, and perhaps East with West, as Hamilton's own puppet master, the dwarf, Billy Kwan, held out for. But that is a hope. I think it was Koch's hope. I am not sure, however, that his character, Hamilton, could ever really achieve that home any more than the rest of us Westerners living in Southeast Asia.
Koch seems to realize he has managed to place his narrative in a unique time. Part of that is brought about through the skillful use of a narrator, "Cookie" (Koch himself). Why skillful? Because the setting of the story is 1965 Indonesia, during the last year of Sukarno's dictatorship. To tell it solely from that viewpoint would have made it too immediate. And the story needs distance. After all, it is told in a semi-nostalgic tone, which is also loaded with the wisdom of age and its accompanying skepticism rather than youthful disillusionment and cynicism. The 13 year gap provides that, as does shifting the point of view of the story from Guy Hamilton, the Australian journalist at the middle of it all, to Hamilton's friend and confidante, Cookie. It is all of a time with its particular era, because the late 1970s, or the "true 1970s," themselves reflected that same exhaustion and skepticism towards anything other than the personal in life.
That is the real story of The Year of Living Dangerously, the exit of the West from Asia, the knowledge that especially Southeast Asia would always have an unknowable quality that Westerners could never understand. Ever. Hamilton depicts that perfectly. His still lingering schoolboy character is built on the echoes of empire and Kipling. His desire to escape the humdrum existence of suburban Australia reflected in his reading of W. Somerset Maugham. And his thirst for adventure and danger in the novels of Ian Fleming's James Bond. These are the books that dominate his bookshelves. And probably the James Bond movies should be included, too. After all, when Hamilton is menacingly held underwater at a mountain top resort pool by a Russian agent, Vera, it is awfully reminiscent of Bambi and Thumper's attack on Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, which, by the way, just happened to be directed by Guy Hamilton.
At book's end, Koch's Guy Hamilton is ejected from Asia altogether. Left physically scared, he holds Asia as his true "home." But it can't be. As is also made clear towards the end, Hamilton belongs to a tradition rooted in the Aegean and flourishing in even further northern climes. Yes, there is clearly something of the dark and light of the Indonesian shadow puppet show in the clash between the two cultures. A hope for a merging of the Christian and the socialist, the Hindu and the Muslim, and perhaps East with West, as Hamilton's own puppet master, the dwarf, Billy Kwan, held out for. But that is a hope. I think it was Koch's hope. I am not sure, however, that his character, Hamilton, could ever really achieve that home any more than the rest of us Westerners living in Southeast Asia.