Jaqueline Kent: Beyond Words: A Year With Kenneth Cook

Join Jacqueline Kent as she takes us through her moving new memoir, Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook.

In 1985, Jacqueline had a satisfying career as a freelance book editor and was emerging as a writer. But then she met Kenneth Cook, author of the Australian classics Wake in Fright and Eliza Fraser, and they fell in love. Set against the backdrop of the 1980s Sydney publishing scene and brimming with stories about stories, Beyond Words is so much more than a memoir.

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.

Best-known for her biographies of Julia Gillard and Beatrice Davis, Jacqueline Kent has penned a warm and beautiful narrative that is both brave and moving.