I picked this book up on the strength of 'The Year of Living Dangerously', which was excellent. The subject is spies and intelligence gathering in Australia. The three main characters all grew up in Hobart in the 1960s. Vincent Austin and Erika Lange share an affinity for deep secrets, and the story mostly concerns them. Derek Bradley is a sort of easy middle-class everyman good-guy cipher; life comes easily to him and we learn little about him. He befriends Vincent and later becomes Erika's lover when the three meet again in 1980s China, each working for the Foreign Affairs department. The characters are well-realised but the plot is rather too structured and uninteresting. Koch's writing convinces most when describing the mood of the artificial city of Canberra, and some of the politics of the various bureacratic departments there, including Australia's main intelligence organisations ASIO (internal), ASIS (external) and ONA (Office of National Assessments). I would have liked to get more insight into the life of an ordinary Australian spy than I did. ( )

A good read against the background of ASIO and secret service. ( )

This book didn't work for me. I kept reading in the hope it would improve.
I was really hoping that the memory room was going to be where the characters 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 ment, for me, that I couldn't suspend disbelief .
I'm not the first person to say, that of the 3 main characters, I was relieved that only the two men narrated the story, I really did not want to spend anytime in Erika's head. A very silly character.
I'm a Canberren and I know many people who handle sensitive information and the characters in this book were not believable. There were holes in the authors description of the city which made me question his other settings. The occasional references to the politics of the time were an enjoyable little journey down memory lane, however, not enough to make for a whole roomful of memories! ( )

Christopher Koch’s The Memory Room is a peculiar creature of a novel. As its winding plot moves through memory after memory, one comes to realise just how appropriate its title is. Seen from a distance, it might reasonably be described as epic; the stories of its three protagonists span half a lifetime, spent in several different countries alongside a myriad of supporting characters. It is tempting at times to categorise it as an intimate study of these three individuals – but this would account for only a third of the book’s material, failing to recognise the equal weight given to the setting itself. Then there are the political discussions, interwoven throughout the novel as though the idea of their absence would be inherently absurd. Koch has created, in equal parts, a study of person, politics and place: three elements that coexist without detracting from each other, and, at times, without really supporting each other either.

Though each reader will be drawn to different aspects of The Memory Room, it is fair to highlight Koch’s characters as the novel’s strong point. Much of this book’s quietly engrossing power is due to the appeal of Erika Berger: erotic, volatile and beautifully complex. Far from progressing with the flow of the story, she seems to begin as a child in control and unravel before the reader’s fascinated eyes. Though her unpredictability is threatened by Koch’s sheer exposure of her, she still far eclipses her two male counterparts, even making Bradley seem flat at times.

As for place; it is hard not to be impressed by Koch’s evocation of Australian cities. He has a remarkable talent for turning familiar places into the landscapes of some lavish fictionalised world, endowing them with the kind of atmospheres only read about in novels. His descriptions will impress older, worldlier readers more so than younger ones, as will his frequent exploration of highbrow political ideas and events. For those uninterested in politics, these sections do little more than distend and hamper the novel.

It is not difficult to see how Koch won the Miles Franklin Award – the quality of his writing is undeniable – but The Memory Room’s readability is somewhat impeded by its breadth. Only a reader with Koch’s exact interests will appreciate every part of it. ( )

I just finished The Memory Room and my feelings were and are quite ambivalent. There was way too much detail about street names and such. Christopher Koch's 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 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. ( )