Official Web Site of the Janet Frame Estate
HOME: http://janetframe.org.nz
BLOG: Slightly Framous
News and Announcements
Counterpoint to publish posthumous novel in
USA
We are delighted to confirm that Janet Frame's posthumously published novel Towards Another Summer will be released in in the USA by Counterpoint.
The Counterpoint imprint represents a new publishing venture formed in January 2008 from the acquisition of three notable independent presses: Shoemaker & Hoard, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull Press.
Counterpoint will also publish a
volume of selected short stories by Janet Frame.
-
Towards Another Translation
Time for an update on recent translation deals.
Seix Barral – has acquired the Spanish rights for Towards
Another Summer and has renewed the rights for the Spanish
edition of Frame's 3-volume Autobiography
De Geus – the Dutch publisher has negotiated a six book deal renewing the rights to their Autobiographical trilogy omnibus as well the three separate volumes. De Geus will publish the Dutch edition of Towards Another Summer, and a Selected Stories is also being translated.
Albert Bonniers – has signed for the Swedish translation of Towards Another Summer and for a renewal of the Swedish rights for the Autobiography.
Also in
Discussions are well underway for French, Italian and German rights for Towards Another Summer and a variety of other titles including backlist renewals. Announcements are expected shortly.
For all rights enquiries please approach the Frame Estate's
literary agency: The
Wylie Agency.
-
Rare TV Interview with Janet Frame now
online
The launch of exciting new web site NZ ON SCREEN has made some rare documentary footage of Janet Frame available for viewing online.
Six clips of Frame being interviewed by Michael Noonan have been archived from the production Three New Zealanders: Janet Frame. This series, also featuring Ngaio Marsh and Sylvia Ashton-Warner, was made to mark International Women's Year in 1975.
The website provides an interesting background perspective by Mary-Jane Duffy in which she comments:
"The interview that
is central to the film negates any stereotypes about Frame's inarticulacy or
shyness. The extensive rare footage of this internationally acclaimed and much
loved
Frame was 50 years old at
the time and living near the seaside at the
Frame was characteristically
self-deprecating about her performance during the extended interview. To her
friend Bill Brown she wrote:
"I
appeared as what I am, a complete ninny with not a word in my head."
Comparing this self-report
with Duffy's observation that "throughout the interview, Noonan
elicits considered and open responses: the warm, funny, brainy Frame comes
across strongly"
is instructive as to the unreliability of Frame's own humble
protestations in which she appears to despair of her deficiencies as a
communicator. But as Duffy says, "despite
Frame's apprehension, onscreen she is confident and self-assured."
- 23 October 2008
Celebrating 50 years of the Robert Burns
Fellowship
The Burns Fellowship at the
The fellowship has provided an impressive array of
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary, an exhibition
of works, manuscripts and scribbles from the 49 recipients went on display at
On
The anthology includes three examples from Frame’s writing, showing once again her versatility and range: a poem she wrote that year, an excerpt from one of the novels she worked on while holding the fellowship, and an essay she later wrote about her experiences as Burns Fellow.
Frame held the fellowship formally in 1965 and was also
funded the following year. She worked prolifically in those two years,
finalising The Adaptable Man,
completing the final draft of A State of
Siege, writing several drafts of The
Rainbirds (also known as Yellow
Flowers in the Antipodean Room), editing a new edition of formerly
published stories and writing more stories, as well as writing many of the
poems later to appear in The Pocket
Mirror. She renewed old friendships and made new friends while in
-
Happy Birthday Janet!
Timaru poet Rhian Gallagher has been named as the recipient
of the 2008 Janet Frame Literary Trust
Award. Gallagher will receive a $10,000
grant from an endowment fund set up by Janet Frame to benefit
Rhian
Gallagher was born in Timaru in 1961. After completing Bill Manhire's composition course at
Janet Frame
Literary Trust chair Pamela Gordon
said 'Rhian Gallagher
is a highly original poet whose well-crafted work has attracted praise both in
the
Bill Manhire
added his endorsement: 'I first knew Rhian Gallagher when she was in a workshop
with a bunch of other formidable young writers: Jenny Bornholdt, Ken Duncum, Elizabeth Knox. Those three are famous now, while Rhian is one of the quiet, astonishing
secrets of
Gallagher's response: 'The award came out of the blue; I'm in the midst of working on my
second collection of poetry so the timing is great. The money will buy some time
and the award itself is a real encouragement. I have been an admirer of Frame's poetry for years so there is this
good feeling to it also. As a poet, Frame definitely ploughed her own furrow.'
Gallagher
will be appearing at the Christchurch Writers Festival at
Link to
some poems by Rhian Gallager at the NZETC: NZ
Electronic Text Centre
Link to
Enitharmon Press London details of Salt
Water Creek
Link to
Best New Zealand Poems 2003, Rhian Gallagher's poem BURIAL and author's note
ANOTHER NEW YORKER STORY
A second
previously unpublished story by Janet Frame has appeared in the pages of the NEW YORKER (September 1 2008).
The story 'GORSE IS NOT PEOPLE' was written in 1954 when Janet Frame was
working as a live-in waitress at the Grand Hotel in Dunedin (now the Southern
Cross Hotel). Frame (who already had a prize-winning book of short stories to
her credit) had submitted Gorse is not People and two poems for
publication in the
influential literary magazine Landfall. The story was rejected by
Charles Brasch, the
editor of Landfall, on the grounds that it was 'too painful to print.' Janet Frame describes the circumstances
surrounding the writing of the story, and her feelings about the rejection, in
Chapter 17 of her memoir An Angel at My
Table.
One can
also partly sympathise with the Landfall editor's position. Frame's story contains a heartbreaking and
powerful criticism of the medical authorities of the day, and she was well
ahead of her time in making a stringent critique of the fact that mental
hospitals had become a dumping ground for anyone who was not considered by a
conformist society to be fit to live in 'the world'.
Link to news report in Otago Daily Times
Link to Channel 9 Video Clip news story
STORMS WILL TELL - Reviews
Poetry Review (Volume 98:2 Summer 2008):
"these rolling dense-packed lines
spill over with language"
"Frame's poems are neither timid
nor derivative; they spin fascinating yarns, lend themselves to the surreal,
thrive on the senses."
"Another ambitious poet in need of posthumous recognition"
Poetry
"Grace and Authenticity"
"Frame's range in these previously uncollected works is wide. She can, for instance, do a perfectly attuned three-line lyric ('The Chickadee'). She can also do extended, long-lined free verse like 'The Landfall Desk'."
". . .an
answering back to the world"
Don
Share has the following to say on his blog:
"it's chastening
and heartening to see the publication of Janet Frame's poetry at long last,
albeit posthumously - her choice, in fact: she once remarked that 'posthumous
publication is the last form of literary decency left'."
"American poets gripe about getting out their first and second books, but Frame only published one, an incredible touchstone for me, The Pocket Mirror; whenever asked, as she repeatedly was, when the next collection would appear, she would explain that she wrote poems all the time, but wrote them too quickly: she wanted her poems to be slower: "Somehow I can't get that." And so everyone just had to wait."
In a later blog post, Don Share speaks of his "love for Frame's work, of course -
and joy at the publication of Storms Will Tell."
Posthumous Novel Nominated for IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award - but is Disqualified
Random House New Zealand has proudly announced that five of their books are included in the nominations for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/newsroom/CONTENTSNEW.htm
This annual award is presented to a novel which, in the opinion of the judges, makes a lasting contribution to excellence in world literature.
The nominations are submitted by libraries in major cities world wide.
The RHNZ books are:
Mr. Allbone's Ferrets, by Fiona Farrell
Towards Another
Summer, by Janet Frame
Drybread by Owen Marshall
Rocking Horse Road, by Carl Nixon
Lucky Bastard, by Peter Wells
Unfortunately the DUBLIN IMPAC award is one of those that require the author to still be alive, so Towards Another Summer doesn’t in fact qualify.
Publishing News from the 2006 Janet Frame
Literary Award Recipient
'O.E.
Middleton is a fine writer ... he's
the only
Beyond the Breakwater: Stories 1948-1998 by O.E. Middleton (edited by
Lawrence Jones) brings together 26 outstanding short stories spanning half a
century by an acclaimed master of the genre, O.E. Middleton. While Middleton
has been linked with the masculine realist New Zealand tradition, this anthology
also contains a diverse range of international settings and characters. At his
best, Middleton's attention to detail and fully realised context brings to mind earlier
masters such as Yukio Mishima and Guy de Maupassant; in a typical Middleton story,
carefully observed detail builds an impressionistic platform on which the
destinies of his characters unravel.
Ted
Middleton spoke to Nigel Benson for
a recent feature in the Otago Daily Times (Sat, 19 July 2008).
Ted
first met Janet Frame in the 1950s when she was living in an army hut at the
back of Frank Sargeson's house on the North Shore of Auckland. Ted's first impression was that 'She was terribly, terribly
shy.' But Frame's initial reserve soon
melted. Ted says: 'In the 1960s, when Janet was living on Waiheke Island, Frank, Janet and
I would sometimes meet for dinner at Frank's, or at a local Chinese restaurant.' The two met up again later
when they were both living in Dunedin. 'Charles Brasch, Janet and I used to go to concerts
together. One night I was escorting her back to her bus stop at the corner of
George St and London St and she told me that thing about making her weep. My initial
defensive reaction was to deflect it away by saying ''But, there could be various reasons for that'',' he chuckles. 'She laughed. '
In
a thoughtful review for the NZ Listener (August 23 2008), Nelson Wattie suggests that 'it is time to dismiss the term 'sons of Sargeson' from the vocabulary of
literary history… it does no justice, for example, to Middleton's originality, unique
vision, sincerity and vernacular liveliness. To the extent that it suggests not
merely 'subsequent to' but 'inferior to' Frank Sargeson, it is
especially unjust. If I had to choose between Sargeson's stories and Middleton's for that test-piece
desert island, I would choose Middleton's without hesitation.'
Gordon McLauchlan also gives Middleton's book a warm recommendation
in the New Zealand Herald (August 14th 2008). He
praises the 'beautifully wrought,' 'casual, unostentatious
descriptions of mood and background,' and found the best of the stories
'effectively written, sincere and with absorbing characters.'
Moonlight :
'This intelligent, moving collection taps into the extraordinarily
powerful way New Zealand poets address the subject of death, dying and grief.
There are 65 poems from poets as diverse as Janet Frame and Glen Colquhoun,
James K Baxter and Michael Jackson, drawn together by one of this country's
finest mid-career poets, Andrew Johnston.'
The Frame
Estate is pleased to be associated with this beautiful anthology edited by
Andrew Johnston. All royalties go to
Hospice New Zealand. The charitable connection was the editor's
plan, as a mark of gratitude for the quality of care given to his late father
by the hospice several years ago.
Another new Frame publication out of
Melbourne!
BOLINDA Publishing, an
international company based in
THE
GOOSE BATH Australian edition to be launched September 2008
Melbourne independent publisher WILKINS
FARAGO has secured the Australian rights to Janet Frame's posthumously published masterwork The Goose
Bath.
'When we
heard that Australian rights to the book were available, we leapt at the
chance,' said Wilkins Farago's publisher, Andrew Wilkins. 'The
Goose Bath will read a hundred years from now, alongside Frame's greatest novels and her autobiography. It's a major work by one of the Southern Hemisphere's most celebrated writers and deserves a wide
readership in Australia.'
The Australian edition will
be released in September 2008.
Janet Frame's Elegy for Sylvia Plath
A recent post on the SLIGHTLY FRAMOUS blog reveals the
connections between Janet Frame's Towards Another
Summer and Sylvia Plath's death in
The
weblog at http://slightlyframous.blogspot.com/
has been set up as an occasional forum for Frame's literary executor to air some more
personal insights about Janet Frame and her Estate.
More Glowing Reviews in the UK for TOWARDS ANOTHER SUMMER
The Times Review by Salley Vickers, 8th August 2008:
'a
flair for poetic metaphor and emotional authenticity'
''Home' is a complex and emotionally
ambiguous concept for most of us and part of Frame's special gift is her visionary's refusal - or inability - to diminish the
stark impact of early experience with the perspectives of adulthood. The horror
and the glory remain intact. (Almost certainly it was this faculty that led to
the misdiagnosis of schizophrenia.)'
'All
of us will have known the agony of feeling out of place in another's domain.
What is so remarkable about Frame is her ability to raise such quotidian crises
to the level of comi-tragedy. '
The Daily Mail Online Review by Stephanie Cross, 4th August
2008:
'Towards Another Summer reveals a writer of both skill and transcendent
beauty. '
'a quicksilver
narrative: elusive, evocative and, at times, overwhelmingly dense and
inward-looking, yet pierced by lightning flashes of wit. '
The Sunday Times Review by
Lucy Atkins, 27th July 2008:
'a
literary treat that has generated much excitement. '
'Much
of the power of this novel … lies simply in the breathtaking economy of the prose.'
'Whether
this posthumous book can offer new insight into Frame's life or psyche is also
surely debatable. After all, a migratory bird is surely not the most reliable
witness.'
The Telegraph Review by Jane Shilling, 20 July 2008:
'comic, melancholy and piercingly observant'
The First Post July 31st 2008 has cobbled together some
of the highlights from several reviews.
THE GOOSE BATH – A paperback edition was released in New Zealand in
July 2008
Due to the popularity of the hardback edition of Janet Frame's prizewinning second volume of poetry, Random House NZ have now published a paperback edition.
This attractive new edition is smaller than the hardback, $10 cheaper, and appears in the flexibind livery of 'The Janet Frame Collection', a series which has seen the reissue of all of Janet Frame's 11 previously published novels.
The new edition was released on Friday the 18th of July 2008
to mark MONTANA
POETRY DAY.
This red letter day was also the first anniversary of the announcement that The Goose Bath had won the 2007 Montana NZ Book Award for Poetry, securing its author a posthumous hat-trick: the distinction of having won the nation's most prestigious literary prize not just for fiction, but also for non-fiction, and finally, for poetry.
End of an Era
June
Gordon 1928-2008
Janet Frame's closest
friend, her last remaining sibling June,
died in
after a
long illness,
aged 80 years.
June's ashes were
mixed with those of her beloved husband Wilson,
and by prior arrangement with their lifelong companion
Janet Frame,
the remains of the couple were buried alongside hers,
in the Frame family grave at Oamaru.
May they rest in peace.
When the sun
shines more years than fear
When the sun shines more years than fear
when birds fly more miles than anger
when sky holds more bird
sails more cloud
shines more sun
than the palm of love carries hate,
even then shall I not in this weary
seventy-year banquet say, Sunwaiter,
Birdwaiter, Skywaiter,
I have no hunger,
remove my plate.
- Janet
Frame
Brilliantly perceptive reviews of Towards
Another Summer:
Hilary Mantel in The Guardian :
'a deeply
rewarding and beautiful novel'
'In this fictionalisation of
her experience Frame calls herself 'Grace
Cleave': 'cleave' meaning both to split and
to adhere. Small talk is impossible if in every word you find a dazzling
plurality of meaning. '
'She knows that ordinary talk
is required, but poetry keeps breaking through.'
'Her sentences display the
pressured uprush of thought, the associative fleetness that her doctors had
called schizophrenic thought disorder but which the more enlightened call
inspiration'
'She is not - not in this
book, at least - hard to read, but piercingly clear. Intensely personal, her
writing is always spiralling in on itself, towards the condition of myth, and
yet it nails the moment, pins down experiences so fleeting that others would
never grasp them. What eludes ordinary language, she can capture in the
extraordinary argot of her imagination. She wasn't divorced from reality - rather, she had a private glimpse of its
heart. '
Laura Thompson in The Telegraph:
'It is a relief to read this book. The reader knows immediately that the prose can be trusted, that this novel exists for a reason beyond contract fulfilment or career advancement. '
'With absolute assurance, Frame renders the lost, uncertain figure of Grace, and considers perhaps the most profound questions a novel can ask: what a person actually is, what it means to live. '
'Frame has been compared with Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. I am more often reminded of Jean Rhys, similarly distanced from her homeland in the West Indies, with an artistic viewpoint that may seem skewed by its own sensitivity but is, in fact, courageously clear-sighted. '
'if it is rather hard to say what Towards Another Summer is about, that is because in the end, like all the best novels, it is simply about itself'
Heartwarming reception for UK edition of posthumous novel:
This beautiful hardback edition - in the Virago
imprint - was released in the UK
'In this deeply personal novel of exile
and loneliness,
Janet Frame proves the master of
nostalgia, beauty, and loss.
Frame is, and will remain, divine'
Alice
Sebold
'The idea of a new novel by Janet Frame is in itself a delight
and Towards Another Summer is a joy to read,
with all the poise, inventiveness and clarity of her other work.'
Maggie O'Farrell
Rachel Cooke's review in The Observer:
'Frame's portrait of the grimy north of the Sixties is humorously grim.'
'As an account of what it is like to be an overly sensitive and lonely single young woman, it is as true and as piercing as anything I have read in a very long time.'
'The novel is exciting for its language - it plays with poetry, magical realism and metaphor in genuinely daring ways - and for the way it embraces themes that will later be central to Frame's best work: the dichotomy between inner and outer worlds, between fantasy and reality, between innocence and experience.'
'It is a short novel, but a numinous one. This time, the keepers of the flame did the right thing.'
Kate Gould's review for THE LIST:
'Far from elucidating the balance
between autobiography and fiction in Frame's writing, the novel simply heightens the mystique surrounding her.'
Michele Roberts
speaking on BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves,
Monday 30 June:
'A wonderful social comedy'
'She carries an entire universe inside herself. She presents herself as shy and sensitive but she wants to be the writer with the chip of ice in her heart, which gives her a wonderful vantage point.'
Emily Perkins speaking on BBC Radio 4 Front
Row, Monday 30 June:
'This is
definitely a book that enhances the Frame collection'
'Frame has an
ability to evoke life as it is lived, a powerful way of describing interiority'
'I was startled
by how rarely you read about homesickness in such an eloquent way.'
The Ibiza Affair
Frame scholars have gathered in Florence, Italy, for an in-depth examination of Janet Frame's stay on the island of Ibiza in the mid 1950s. The session took place on the 2nd July 2008 as part of the 15th annual conference of the New Zealand Studies Association. The conference theme this year was: New Zealand and the Mediterranean.
Speakers at the 'Janet Frame and Ibiza' session were:
* Claire Bazin (University Paris X): 'Sea, Sex and Sun: Janet
Frame's Experience(s) in Ibiza'
* Simone Oettli-van Delden (University of
Geneva):
'From
Plato's Cave to Mirror City: Mediterranean Inspiration in the Autobiography of
Janet Frame'
* Valerie Baisnee (University Paris XI): 'To Ibiza: Separation and
Recreation in Frame's Island Narrative'
Chair was Janet Wilson (University of Northampton).
BBC Interview with Frame and Kerouac literary executors
Harriett Gilbert, presenter of the BBC
World Service book show The Word,
spoke to the literary executors for Janet
Frame and Jack Kerouac 'to find out what they do to
protect the copyright and reputations of their late authors.'
The programme first aired on
US edition confirmed:
The Janet Frame Literary Trust is delighted to announce
that there will be a
Further details will follow.
NEW JANET FRAME SHORT STORY IN THE NEW YORKER
A Night at the Opera: Fiction:The New
Yorker
Quite
a stir has been created by the appearance of a formerly unknown Janet Frame
story in the 2nd June 2oo8 issue of The New Yorker. The
publication of "A Night at the Opera" has revived an old relationship between Janet
Frame and The New Yorker, which printed several Janet Frame stories in
the 1960s.
"A Night at the Opera" was written in 1954, when Janet Frame was working
as a live-in waitress in the Grand Hotel, Dunedin. She had recently received
her discharge from Seacliff Mental Hospital after having won a literary prize
for her first book The Lagoon and other Stories. Janet Frame wrote
several superb stories at this time drawing on her experiences in psychiatric
institutions. She found to her dismay that the subject matter was "too painful" for the journal editors of
the day, and the stories have languished amongst her papers ever since.
"A Night at the Opera" is a powerful evocation of a screening of the Marx
Brothers'
movie in a back ward for disturbed patients. Janet Frame wrote later (in her
autobiography An Angel at My Table) of her compassion for her fellow inmates, most of
whom never escaped their incarceration: "It was their sadness and courage and my desire to 'speak' for them that enabled me to survive," and the publication of this brilliantly crafted story has been a
source of much satisfaction for the Janet Frame Estate.
GOOSE LAYS GOLDEN EGG
The Goose Bath achieves Premier
New Zealand Gold Bestseller accreditation
From the Booksellers New Zealand website: "Books become Premier New Zealand Bestsellers when they achieve outstanding sales within New Zealand. Top-selling New Zealand books are recognised with accreditation to four levels of success...The total sales within New Zealand for each book, across all editions, are verified and, once confirmed, the book becomes an officially accredited Premier New Zealand Bestseller. Only accredited Premier New Zealand Bestsellers can wear the official platinum, gold, silver and bronze seals."
We are especially delighted at this recognition of the strong sales for Janet Frame's second poetry volume, given that Janet Frame's first book of poetry, The Pocket Mirror, has been one of the best selling collections of poetry in New Zealand history but has never been sufficiently acknowledged as such. This and several other of Frame's titles, although they have also sold well within New Zealand, for various reasons are either not officially recognised as bestsellers, or their level of accreditation does not adequately reflect their actual sales history. (This anomaly is due to a chequered publishing history involving multiple publishers and multiple editions and the consequent difficulty of collating sales figures.)
The latest title in Random House NZ's "Janet Frame
Collection"
June 2008 sees the reissue of the last two novels in Janet Frame's back list: Intensive Care and Daughter Buffalo.
Investigating those pesky old myths... and some new ones!
Which of the often bizarre anecdotes about Janet Frame that circulate without attribution, are true, and which are false?
Where do the stories come from and why do they seem to be preferable to the truth, which is often - but not always - far more boring?
In common with "urban myths", the source of the "Janecdote" is often tantalisingly almost verifiable. It has usually been sworn to be true by someone who talked to someone who knew or met Frame, or who once met a distant family member or a friend or a former neighbour.
Janet Frame's niece and close friend Pamela Gordon has been collecting these "Janecdotes" for many years now, at first involuntarily, but in more recent years with a growing fascination. She has been mulling over the possible conditions of the genesis of the often unlikely tales, and investigating how they are circulated and propagated.
She has discovered that Frame fans are very interested in unpicking the pseudo-biographical vignettes, and she has developed an entertaining talk on the subject, titled:
"Unravelling the 'Janecdotes':
fact and fiction in stories about Janet Frame."
This talk was first given on May 13th 2008 at Oamaru to an audience of about a hundred people.
RIP Paul Wonner, April 2008
Sadly we mourn the loss of another of Janet Frame's inner circle: artist Paul Wonner died recently in San Francisco, on the eve of his 88th birthday.
Frame's friend & fellow poet Ruth Dallas dies in Dunedin on 18
March 2008 aged 88
Ruth Minnie Mumford (Ruth Dallas)
Another sad loss of one of Janet Frame's close friends. Click link to see the NZ Book Council page on DALLAS, Ruth
Frame Translator to Direct New Zealand Centre for Literary
Translation
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark
congratulates Jean Anderson at the launch of the Centre, 3rd March 2008
Dr Jean Anderson, Senior Lecturer in French at the School of Asian & European Languages & Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington, is to direct the new New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation based at the University. She explains: "As a centre, we are going to have two mission statements. One is to do whatever we can to increase awareness of what literary translation is, and increase the amount of translation into New Zealand English. The other is to assist with the translation of New Zealand writers into other languages. Both these activities will be supported by research into the processes and reception of translated works."
Jean Anderson is a notable translator from French into English and co-translator of New Zealand writing into French. She collaborated with French author Nadine Ribault on the translation of a selection of Janet Frame's stories and essays for French Publisher Antoinette Fouque.
Le
lagon et autre nouvelles (Antoinette
Fouque, Editions des Femmes, Paris France 2006).
New Australian editions of two of Janet Frame's most popular novels
Living in the Maniototo (Vintage Australia, March 2008)
"Quirky, rich, eccentric" - Margaret Atwood
"Probably as near a masterpiece as we are likely to see this year... it is
a novel full of riches." -
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Puts everything else that has come my way this year in the shade." -
The Guardian
"The most original and resourceful novel I have read for a long
time." - New Statesman
"Frame's novel is remarkable - full of word plays, cameo portraits and
deliberate mystery" - Publisher's Weekly
Faces in the Water, (Vintage Australia, April 2008)
An undisputed classic, this is the only New Zealand
novel to be listed in the bestselling 1001 Books you must read before you die.
Nobel prize-winning Australian author Patrick White said
that Frame's fiction made him feel that "I have always been a couple of
steps from where I wanted to get in my own writing".
Doris Lessing was moved to write, "what an
extraordinary woman she is, overcoming such obstacles, and making fresh and
good use of them in her work".
Australian Edition of Frame's 3-Volume Autobiography released March
2008
AN ANGEL AT MY
TABLE (Vintage Australia March 2008)
(contains all
three volumes + an introduction by Jane Campion)
' ... one of the
most beautifully toned and moving books I have ever read and the best book ever
written by a New Zealander.' Jane Campion
(from her
Introduction to this Volume)