Giving stuff away. Makes a nice change from the routine but constant slog of running a literary estate.
I had some spare copies of some of Janet Frame's translated editions in stock, and remembering the visit last year to the Oamaru Library to celebrate the opening of their special Janet Frame cabinet, I asked the librarians if they'd fancy having some of the foreign editions.
Of course they would! So here I am above, courtesy of the local Oamaru paper, pictured with Jean Rivett (community services librarian) handing 40 books over to the Oamaru Library's Janet Frame collection.
From memory the languages included Italian, Polish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Japanese. Titles included Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, The Lagoon, Living in the Maniototo, the Autobiography, Intensive Care, Owls Do Cry, Faces in the Water.
Oamaru has a steady stream of overseas Frame fans following the Janet Frame trail - especially to visit the house at 56 Eden Street now that it is open to the public, but many visitors also go the Library and the Museum and other Frame haunts, so it will be a nice surprise for some of the tourists to encounter her books in their own languages.
For the locals it is an insight into the international appeal of the writings of their famous fellow Oamaruvian.
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