Country Australia Publication date 1961 Originally published 1961 ISBN 0207140138 Followed by Chain of Darkness | Language English Media type Print Publisher Michael Joseph Pages 191 pp | |
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Wake in Fright (1961) is the debut novel by Australian author Kenneth Cook.
Contents
Plot outline
School teacher John Grant has been assigned to a small country school in the fictional town of Tiboodna. At the end of the school term he decides to take a holiday in Sydney and stops overnight in a rough outback mining town called Bundanyabba. After a drunken night he finds himself stuck in the town with no money and no means of escape.
Critical reception
In his introduction to the 2012 Text Publishing edition Peter Temple noted: "Wake in Fright is a young writer's work: romantic, at times naive. It also suffers from some uncertainty of character and there are problems of balance. These are flaws but they are outmuscled by the writer's strengths. Cook can make us feel the heat, see the endless horizon, hear the sad singing on a little train as it traverses the monotonous plain...And Cook has range too. He captures the icy, flooding charm of a first beer on a heat-struck day. He knows what it feels like to catch luck's eye and hold the gaze across a smoky room, to feel the irrational deservedness of it, to hear fortune singing sweet n the veins. And he knows dark things—the frightening chasm that opens when certainty disappears, the savagery in the human heart. Wake in Fright has the power to disturb, a rare thing in any novel."
Film adaptation
The novel was adapted for the screen in 1971. The film was directed by Ted Kotcheff, from a script by Evan Jones, and featured Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence and Chips Rafferty in the lead roles.