Janet Frame (1924-2004) is New Zealand's most famous writer. She
was a novelist, poet, essayist and short-story writer. She sought
the support and company of fellow writers and set out
single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a
writer. She wrote her first novel, Owls Do Cry while staying with
her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return
for seven years.
Her autobiography inspired Jane Campion's acclaimed film, An Angel
at My Table. She was an honorary foreign member of the American
Academy of Arts and Literature and won the Commonwealth Literature
Prize. In 1983 she was awarded the CBE.
Janet Frame was a unique and troubled soul whose luminous words are
the more precious because they were snatched from the jaws of the
disaster of her early life
Owls Do Cry remains innovative and relevant; Frame's idiosyncratic
and startlingly visual style means that the book's immense power to
unnerve, astonish and impress endures
*Guardian*
This is the era that saw the emergence of novelists including Doris
Lessing, Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch, and Frame's place alongside
them would be assured if she never published anything but this one
novel
*Independent on Sunday*
Owls Do Cry is a devastating reflection on the character of
conventional society and the dangers that await those who reject
its narrowness - and as such, is profoundly chilling. It is also a
vivid social document, capturing the language and texture of the
postwar period
*Irish Times*
Janet Frame's first novel, Owls Do Cry, created a sensation in New
Zealand when it was published in 1957 . . . Her dark, eloquent song
captured my heart . . . Frame gave Daphne this inner world of
gorgeously imagined riches, but also affirmed it in me, and in
countless other sensitive teenage girls: we had been given a voice
- poetic, powerful and fated.
Frame's tormented personal story was reflected in much of her
fiction, which centered on the inadequacy of language to convey
emotions
*Los Angeles Times*
An unforgettable and startlingly original work, a true and timeless
classic of enduring power
*Margaret Drabble*
Janet Frame is the greatest New Zealand writer. She is utterly
herself. Any one of her books could be published today and it would
be ground-breaking
*Eleanor Catton*
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