Booklist

Author of the Month: Janet Frame

Selected by the Bookshop


Our Author of the Month for May is Aotearoa New Zealand-born writer Janet Frame. After suffering an emotional breakdown as a young woman, Frame narrowly avoided a lobotomy, the operation cancelled when news came through that her first book had won a prestigious literary prize. Amongst her many masterpieces, her autobiography An Angel at my Table – filmed by Jane Campion and described by Patrick White as being ‘amongst the wonders of the world’ – is a good place to start, but don’t stop there. She was a quite extraordinary writer.

From the publisher:
'One of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century ... A journey from luminous childhood, through the dark experiences of supposed madness, to the renewal of her life through writing fiction. It is a heroic story, and told with such…

From the publisher:
'I was now an established citizen with little hope of returning across the frontier; I was in the crazy world, separated now by more than locked doors and barred windows from the people who called themselves sane.'When Janet Frame's doctor…

From the publisher:
'All I had experienced, all the stories I had read or dreamed came to me the moment I, a stranger, turned the key in the lock of the unknown house.'In a sweltering basement in downtown Baltimore, Mavis Halleton, writer, ventriloquist and…

From the publisher:
Owls Do Cry is the story of the Withers family: Francie, soon to leave school to start work at the woollen mills; Toby, whose days are marred by the velvet cloak of epilepsy; Chicks, the baby of the family; and Daphne, whose rich, poetic…

From the publisher:
'I'm a short story addict, both reading and writing them, and I always keep hoping for the perfect story.' (Janet Frame to Tim Curnow, January 1984)THE DAYLIGHT AND THE DUST is the most comprehensive selection of Janet Frame's stories ever…

From the publisher:
Janet Frame (1924-2004) was one of New Zealand’s foremost modern writers, best-known for her prizewinning novels and for the three-volume autobiography later adapted by Jane Campion into her film An Angel at My Table.Janet Frame…

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