Wake in Fright (novel)
| Author | Kenneth Cook |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Michael Joseph, London |
Publication date | 1961 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 191 pp |
| ISBN | 0207140138 |
| Preceded by | – |
| Followed by | Chain of Darkness |
Wake in Fright (1961) is the debut novel by Australian author Kenneth Cook.[1]
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 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."[2]
Notes
The novel takes its title from an old curse: "May you dream of the Devil and wake in fright."[1]
The novel was re-issued by Text Publishing as a part of their Text Classics series in 2012. It contained an introduction by Peter Temple.[3]
Warm Vellum bookshop listed the novel as having one of the best opening lines in literature.[4] That lines reads: ""He sat at his desk, wearily watching the children file out of the room, reflecting that, this term at least, it was reasonable to assume that none of the girls was pregnant."
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.[5]