Trigger warning: Animal murder
I thought this was really good, but parts of the book felt slow which is why I gave it 4 stars. I have never heard of this before, but was looking up horror books taking place in Australia and was recommended this one.
Wake in Fright follows schoolteacher John Grant. Grant is contemptuous of his job as a teacher in Tiboonda which is in the Australian Outback. Grant can’t wait for his break and to return to Sydney and the cool coast. Grant though has to travel to Bundanyabba, called The Yabba in the book by all of the locals. And while in the Yabba, Grant meets a different and darker side to Australia.
What I found interesting is that you go in feeling a bit sorry for John Grant, but his constant looking down on other people and thinking he is somehow better than the locals in the Yabba you start to just wait for something terrible to come his way soon. And then you get the first incident which if Grant had chosen differently, maybe things would not have worked out the way that they did. You in essence follow Grant going through everything a person can go through and you just wonder how it’s going to end.
You meet a handful of key characters in this one that felt like they represented some dark force. Grant eventually meets a policeman named Crawford who proceeds to lead him into his first folly, and from there many other characters, a mining director named Hynes, his daughter, and then an alcoholic doctor named Tydon.
I can honestly say that Cook did a great job of the Australian Outback. It felt like a flat and merciless place that had nothing but heat and dust. You can see why many locals at the Yabba chose to drink from sunup to sundown. Even the description of the food after a while starts to turn your stomach.
The ending I thought was a surprise since I thought it was going one way, but in the end you are left wondering what lessons did Grant learn, if any.
