Gripped by Drought [Hardcover]

Arthur William Upfield (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0939767198 | ISBN-13: 978-0939767199 | Publication Date: January 1990

Frank Mayne owns a sheep station of about 800,000 acres in western New South Wales. On a visit to England he meets and marries Ethel. They then travel around the world for three years before going home to Australia in the first year of a drought. After two more years of drought and a failed marriage that spawns an orgy of entertainment and other costs, Frank faces ruin.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Dennis Mcmillan Pubns (January 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0939767198
• ISBN-13: 978-0939767199
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,203,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Great Novel, December 20, 2005

By 

E. Perkins - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gripped by Drought (Hardcover)

I just wrote a review for Arthur Upfield's "Lure of the Bush" then, since in the review I waxed favorably about "Gripped By the Drought" as a better book, I typed in this page on the Amazon book line thinking I should write here what I'd written there. In getting to the "Write a Review" line I tripped over three disappointments though. First, there's been no popular reprint of the book; second, a copy costs $480, shipping not included; then and third, the only other reviewer, David Colburn, seems to have run out of gold stars - he stopped at three- to give Upfield's first and greatest book. Colburn recommends it as a "good read" though. I'll go him two stars better and reiterate what I wrote elsewhere, "Gripped By the Drought" is one of the best novels ever written. Here's why. The plot's tight except for a few diversions to describe people but those asides only add interest to the story. The characterizations are excellent. Describing people is one of Upfield's great strengths. Describing nature and its effects is another Upfield strength and here he's at his best. At points in this book the tension of weather troubles is so great you'll want to skip pages to avoid suffering along with characters. Where an author can write so well that you both want to read the story but emotionally can't, that's great writing. The themes of man against nature, of an incompatible couple trying to integrate their lives, of friend putting friend over self, and the other lesser ones are masterfully told and woven well together. This is a believable story, it's memorable, and to take a word from the title, it's gripping. Get a copy through interlibrary loan. To reiterate, this is a "good read."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gripped by Drought, October 19, 2005

By 

David Colburn "Noxqqq" (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gripped by Drought (Hardcover)

Most of us know Arthur W. Upfield because of his twenty-nine detective stories featuring the incomparable Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-Aboriginal sleuth. GRIPPED BY DROUGHT is one of an handful of non-Bony books by Upfield, and is reputed to have been Upfield's personal favorite.

In an introductory remark, the author apologizes for the work's title. He had intended to use just the word "DROUGHT", but there was another book with that title already in print when GRIPPED BY DROUGHT went to press in 1932.

The plot traces the impact of a three years' drought on the gigantic Atlas sheep station. The hero is Feng Ching-wei, a diligent station manager of Chinese descent, who looks after the interests of his lifelong friend Frank Mayne. Mayne's intelligence and leadership qualities, sorely needed during the drought, are nullified by his preoccupation with the emotional complications of his loveless marriage. Because of Feng's strength of character and discretion, Atlas is saved from financial ruin, and Frank Mayne gets a new lease on life.

In a sense, this early Upfield work laid the foundation for many of his subsequent stories. If you've read the "Bony" books, you'll notice right away that the Chinese-Aussie Feng has a lot in common with the half-caste Inspector Bonaparte. (Born-apart; get it?) Principally, each man's character was fired in the forge of racial discrimination. In order to suceed in the white man's world of 1930, a person of color needed almost superhuman energy and integrity, as well as intelligence and an unflagging work ethic. The very sympathetic elderly British character called "Sir John" seems to be the prototype of the character called "John Lutton" in THE BATTLING PROPHET, which Upfield wrote twenty-four years later. The relentless progression of the three years' drought prefigures the drought sequence in DEATH OF A LAKE.(1954) The necessity of desperate measures in animal husbandry is revisited in THE TORN BRANCH, which appeared in 1959.

Upfield's biographer, Jessica Hawke, mentioned an incident in which Upfield and a friend were once falsely imprisoned by a small-town police official who needed free labor to repaint the jail. Apparently the incident made a lasting impression on Upfield, because he explored the idea at least twice in his fiction; once in GRIPPED BY DROUGHT, and again, fourteen years later, in DEATH OF A SWAGMAN.

If you've read the "Bony " books, you NEED to read GRIPPED BY DROUGHT, but good luck finding a reading copy! It is by far the rarest Upfield book; copies that come up for sale are extremely collectible, and always cost several hundred dollars. Examples of the original edition of 1932 are almost never seen. The American edition, which Dennis McMillan printed in 1990, had a press run of only 450 copies, and those are the ones that cost $400-$600 on the internet today. I finally borrowed a copy on inter-library loan. It's a good read, and especially impressive when you realize that it was written by a rough laborer of very modest educational attainment, but this book doesn't have the artistic maturity of Upfield's later work.

5.0 out of 5 stars Arthur Upfield's first novel and his best one, September 30, 2007

By 

E. Perkins - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gripped by Drought (Hardcover)

I wrote a review for Arthur Upfield's "Lure of the Bush" then, since in the review I waxed favorably about "Gripped By the Drought" as a better book, I typed in this page on the Amazon book line thinking I should write here what I'd written there. In getting to the "Write a Review" line I tripped over three disappointments. First, there's been no popular reprint of the book; second, a copy costs $200, shipping not included; then and third, the only other reviewer, David Colburn, seems to have run out of gold stars - he stopped at three- to give Upfield's first and greatest book. Colburn recommends it as a "good read" though. I'll go him two stars better and reiterate what I wrote elsewhere that, "Gripped By the Drought" is one of the best novels ever written. Here's why. The plot's tight except for a few diversions to describe people but those asides only add interest to the story. The characterizations are excellent. Describing people is one of Upfield's great strengths. Describing nature and its effects is another Upfield strength and here he's at his best. At points in this book the tension of weather troubles is so great you'll want to skip pages to avoid suffering along with characters. Where an author can write so well that you both want to read the story but emotionally can't, that's great writing. The themes of man against nature, of an incompatible couple trying to integrate their lives, of friend putting friend over self, and the other lesser ones are masterfully told and woven well together. This is a believable story, it's memorable, and to take a word from the title, it's gripping. Get a copy through interlibrary loan or buy one of those available through Amazon. To reiterate, this is a "good read."