The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.

The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



Sisters drowned, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia., 13 Feb 2002
Volume two of Janet Frame's amazing biography is absolutely stunning. This portion has been singled out for special recognition because of the film version of the same name directed by Jane Campion. Volumes one and two are no less worthy of praise however. All three books are filled with breathtaking revelations of a life filled with tortured and harrowing experiences. It is a confirmation of the human spirit that someone who has been through so much to despair at should come through it able to reveal her story in such a lyrically poetic way. A truly stunning collection of work. Though these works Frame has surely become the Antipode's foremost confessor. A remarkable achievement.

I have visited New Zealand on several occasions and the book's descriptions of the country are absolutely accurate and evoke the sense of the landscape and people in such a detailed way that I feel as if I am still there when I read a passage. This is a testament to Frame's descriptive power which is completely mesmeric. If you haven't already read any Frame, this is a good place to start although the obvious choice would be to start at the beginning. I feel confident that having read one you will want to read more so why not buy all three? I did.

The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



Sisters drowned, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia., 13 Feb 2002
Volume two of Janet Frame's amazing biography is absolutely stunning. This portion has been singled out for special recognition because of the film version of the same name directed by Jane Campion. Volumes one and two are no less worthy of praise however. All three books are filled with breathtaking revelations of a life filled with tortured and harrowing experiences. It is a confirmation of the human spirit that someone who has been through so much to despair at should come through it able to reveal her story in such a lyrically poetic way. A truly stunning collection of work. Though these works Frame has surely become the Antipode's foremost confessor. A remarkable achievement.

I have visited New Zealand on several occasions and the book's descriptions of the country are absolutely accurate and evoke the sense of the landscape and people in such a detailed way that I feel as if I am still there when I read a passage. This is a testament to Frame's descriptive power which is completely mesmeric. If you haven't already read any Frame, this is a good place to start although the obvious choice would be to start at the beginning. I feel confident that having read one you will want to read more so why not buy all three? I did.

beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...

The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



Sisters drowned, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia., 13 Feb 2002
Volume two of Janet Frame's amazing biography is absolutely stunning. This portion has been singled out for special recognition because of the film version of the same name directed by Jane Campion. Volumes one and two are no less worthy of praise however. All three books are filled with breathtaking revelations of a life filled with tortured and harrowing experiences. It is a confirmation of the human spirit that someone who has been through so much to despair at should come through it able to reveal her story in such a lyrically poetic way. A truly stunning collection of work. Though these works Frame has surely become the Antipode's foremost confessor. A remarkable achievement.

I have visited New Zealand on several occasions and the book's descriptions of the country are absolutely accurate and evoke the sense of the landscape and people in such a detailed way that I feel as if I am still there when I read a passage. This is a testament to Frame's descriptive power which is completely mesmeric. If you haven't already read any Frame, this is a good place to start although the obvious choice would be to start at the beginning. I feel confident that having read one you will want to read more so why not buy all three? I did.

beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...





beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...

The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



Sisters drowned, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia., 13 Feb 2002
Volume two of Janet Frame's amazing biography is absolutely stunning. This portion has been singled out for special recognition because of the film version of the same name directed by Jane Campion. Volumes one and two are no less worthy of praise however. All three books are filled with breathtaking revelations of a life filled with tortured and harrowing experiences. It is a confirmation of the human spirit that someone who has been through so much to despair at should come through it able to reveal her story in such a lyrically poetic way. A truly stunning collection of work. Though these works Frame has surely become the Antipode's foremost confessor. A remarkable achievement.

I have visited New Zealand on several occasions and the book's descriptions of the country are absolutely accurate and evoke the sense of the landscape and people in such a detailed way that I feel as if I am still there when I read a passage. This is a testament to Frame's descriptive power which is completely mesmeric. If you haven't already read any Frame, this is a good place to start although the obvious choice would be to start at the beginning. I feel confident that having read one you will want to read more so why not buy all three? I did.

beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...





beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...





The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.

The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



Sisters drowned, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia., 13 Feb 2002
Volume two of Janet Frame's amazing biography is absolutely stunning. This portion has been singled out for special recognition because of the film version of the same name directed by Jane Campion. Volumes one and two are no less worthy of praise however. All three books are filled with breathtaking revelations of a life filled with tortured and harrowing experiences. It is a confirmation of the human spirit that someone who has been through so much to despair at should come through it able to reveal her story in such a lyrically poetic way. A truly stunning collection of work. Though these works Frame has surely become the Antipode's foremost confessor. A remarkable achievement.

I have visited New Zealand on several occasions and the book's descriptions of the country are absolutely accurate and evoke the sense of the landscape and people in such a detailed way that I feel as if I am still there when I read a passage. This is a testament to Frame's descriptive power which is completely mesmeric. If you haven't already read any Frame, this is a good place to start although the obvious choice would be to start at the beginning. I feel confident that having read one you will want to read more so why not buy all three? I did.

beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...





beautiful/sad slices of life, 27 Dec 2006
my first foray into NZ literature has been Janet Frame... a new discovery for me, even though she's one of New Zealand's most famous writers and won many prizes for her writing (novels, short stories, autobiography, poems).

This is her first collection of short stories published in 1951. The Lagoon is a collection of 24 stories, mostly written in first person, some are very short, but all have a beautiful attention for sensory detail.

I found the writing simple and stripped down. Its focus is on small resonating emotional moments and realisations. Often the narrators are adults reflecting on being a child, or children exploring their experience of family, or other more isolated characters - as in Dossy about a child with an imaginary friend, or Jan Godfrey whose narrator is in a psychiatric hospital.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea - there is little deep intellectual or psychological analysis (although there is some interesting decontruction of self and story-telling in two of these stories).

Primarily, this is an emotional journey, a reflective collection, one deeply rooted in physical and emotional experience. The stories are voice-driven, beautifully detailed, achingly sad. They inter-relate, but are strong enough to stand alone. Read them in one sitting or slip them into short slices of time and let them linger...





The godwits vanish towards another summer and none knows where he will lie down at night., 31 Aug 2008
I finished Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame last night and really, it's quite difficult to say how I felt about it because it is too good to capture....

It is brilliantly written and it shows the difficulties which she experienced in conveying by speaking just how she felt.Of course, in writing she was outstanding at explaining her thoughts, but when confronted by people, she could not say much. As the character, Grace Cleave, she describes her childhood memories and the fears she experienced but then when her hosts ask her about New Zealand, she cannot put that into words and she is aware of the inadequacy of her replies but still she can't speak of the memories she has.

' On the map, the last building is marked heavily in black: Industrial School.

'Industrial school...a place filled with whirling black skeletons...of which dust was the flesh, and that being sent to the In dust rial School you were caged inside a skeleton and forced to revolve with it in a fury of black dust until eventually your body became indistinguishable from the skeleton....'

' Hello! Had a good walk?
Yes, thank you...'

Grace Cleave, a writer leaves London to visit Philip and Anne and their little children - for a break away, and she occupies the room of Anne's father who is from New Zealand.
At night, she reads 'The Book of New Zealand Verse' and she remembers.

She is a migratory bird, so she reminds herself constantly and she has not settled in one place.
Her thoughts return to the old home and the old ways and we are able to see the brilliance of Janet Frame's writing shining through the obfuscations of her childhood life and the many misunderstandings and the grinding poverty of the family.

Yet she cannot convey those thoughts to her host family, so she quietly goes for walks and remembers.
Until eventually after a couple of days, she realises that she is much happier alone in London, and she decides to return.

"It was taking so long to get used to the ways of the world : Grace did not think she would ever learn.'

Many of us are very grateful that Janet Frame left this book, which she considered too personal to be published in her lifetime, to be published after her death because of the beauty of her writing, the brilliance of her style and the glimpses into her troubled and tortured writer's mind.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the greatest writers whom I have ever read.

'....Let the world have wonder enough to care
when poets live
and to grieve when they die.'

Val De Beer.



A wonderful story of survival, 15 Jan 2002
"Faces in the Water" is a gripping account of life in a psychiatric institution as told by the fictional Istina Mavet. The narrator spends a decade of her life in two New Zealand psychiatric hospitals. The book conveys the passage of time very effectively, despite the fact that in 10 years there were few changes in treatment and no discernable change in attitude towards the patients. Electric shock treatment is the main treatment on offer, and is often used to punish "undesirable behaviour". The power relationships between doctors, nurses and patients are illustrated beautifully. And the picture of the regime administered by these well-meaning people is a terrifying one of bullying, humiliation and non-communication. Janet Frame describes Istina and her fellow patients with great warmth and compassion. Ultimately this is a wonderful story of survival. I found it a fascinating and moving one.

The de-mythologising of madness., 06 Jun 2001
Written from the point of view of a patient held within New Zealand mental institutions, Faces in the Water is an eloquent description of madness. The novel reveals the treatment of the mad while attacking the myth of the Mad Romantic heroine revealing frightening truths about the reality of mental illness. An absorbing and exciting read that broadens the range of reader experience.