RARA-AVIS: WAKE IN FRIGHT, Kenneth Cook 1962

From: Michael Robison ( zspider@gte.net)
Date: 16 May 2003


It was time for me to get back to some Australian books. This one is set in western Australia a long ways inland, bordering on the outback. It's a hot, dry, barren land. A school teacher stuck in a desolate little town in the middle of nowhere finally gets a 6-week vacation, and plans to make the long trip by rail to Sydney to enjoy it. On the way, on an overnight stay in a town waiting for the next train, he succumbs to gambling fever and loses all his money. His flawed character, combined with his lack of money, sends him sliding down the social ladder in a desperate struggle to get out of the town.

The kangaroo hunt is a shocking orgy of calloused killing and savagery. I loved it.

SPOILER:

Anybody read this one? Am I wrong or was there a little sodomy going on at the end of the kangaroo hunt? There's just hints, nothing more, and I want to know if I read them correctly. My other question is if anybody else thought the ending cheated, and should have been a lot more noirish.

miker

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 May 2003 EDT