Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook

Jacqueline Kent

Feb 2019 · Univ. of Queensland Press

About this ebook

In 1985 Jacqueline Kent was content with her life. She had a satisfying career as a freelance book editor, and was emerging as a writer. Living and working alone, she relished her independence. But then she met Kenneth Cook, author of the Australian classic Wake in Fright, and they fell in love. With bewildering speed Jacqueline found herself in alien territory: with a man almost twenty years older, whose life experience could not have been more different from her own. She had to come to terms with complicated finances and expectations, and to negotiate relationships with Ken’s children, four people almost her own age. But with this man of contradictions – funny and sad, headstrong and tender – she found real and sustaining companionship. Their life together was often joyful, sometimes enraging, always exciting – until one devastating evening. But, as Jacqueline discovered, even when a story is over that doesn’t mean it has come to an end.

About the author

Jacqueline Kent was born in Sydney and grew up there and in Adelaide. After completing an arts degree she returned to Sydney and worked as a journalist, radio producer and scriptwriter for the ABC; in the 1970s she changed direction and became a book editor. She has written books of social history, general non-fiction and biography. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life won the National Biography Award and the Nita B. Kibble Award, and she is the biographer of musician and activist Hephzibah Menuhin, and of Julia Gillard. She holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney. Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook is her first memoir.