Review of Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch by Jean-François Vernay

Abstract

Christopher Koch occupies an undeniably prominent place in contemporary Australian fiction. This is explained in part by his longevity as a writer. Born in 1932, Koch's generation includes—of those who are still writing actively—such important contributors as Shirley Hazzard (1931); David Malouf (1934); Rodney Hall (1935); Thomas Keneally (1935) and Frank Moorhouse (1938). Of these Hazzard and Keneally published their first substantial fiction in the mid-1960s, and Malouf, Hall and Moorhouse in the '70s. Koch, however, debuted with The Boys in the Island in 1958, making him something of the 'senior' amongst his contemporaries. Koch's prominence is also testimony to his virtues as a novelist. These include strong and carefully constructed plotting; psychologically convincing characterisation; and a sure sense of the shifts in Australia's social and political evolution which has resulted in a series of engagingly topical novels.