Michael
Hyde
Hey Joe
isbn 0 9580794 4 7
218pp rrp $18.95
Jimi doesn’t know his
father, Joe; the least he can do is go to Vietnam and try
to find him. With the aid of Joe’s half-written novel,
an uncanny sense of direction and more than a dash of luck
Jimi sets off on a search for his father . . . and himself.
Hey
Joe may be the first novel that tells the story
of the sixties in Australia from the point of view of a
protestor. In Joe Thorn, Michael Hyde has created a character
who embodies both the idealism and self-indulgence of that
generation. Thorn’s son, Jimi, brings a contemporary
perspective to the book. Written with an ear for Australian
vernacular, Hey Joe is a deeply felt novel
that unravels a secret that highlights significant aspects
of that country’s tragic conflict. Arnold Zable
The author of MAX
and Tyger Tyger is back with his third novel . . .
and this time it’s personal – the story he has been
trying to write for a long time. Michael
reaches into his own past and discovers a story from his Vietnam
activist days – a story that has haunted him for thirty
years – a story of the choices his generation made and
the price they paid then and are still paying now.
He says,
“I was what you might call ‘busy’ during
the Vietnam War; and I made some choices that are still
reverberating in my life – most of them I’m glad
I made.” Yet, as he points out, “sometimes I wonder
whether I, like the culture around me, tried to bury the
past; whether we all just forgot to deal with it. Despite
impressions to the contrary, Vietnam is the gap in our records.
Where, for example, are all the novels of the Vietnam War,
especially those that give the counter-culture’s side
of the story?”
Michael has moved to correct
that absence, writing a novel that is about the War and its
effect on all Australians: soldiers, civilians, protesters
and their mystified children. Typically energetic and evocative
Hyde pushes and chases shadows around Vietnam until, in a
fitting climax . . .
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Lou Scacciante's study guide for Hey Joe
