Dunedin maid made good*

I was recently interviewed for Dunedin's TV Channel 9 and for a local audience I stressed how the new book Janet Frame in her own words would probably surprise some people who had been influenced by the myth of Janet Frame as a socially incapable person, given that it provides evidence for her nearly 80 years of vigorous engagement with the world.

http://www.ch9.co.nz/content/her-own-words

Of course there is so much more to the book than the biographical aspect of filling in a more rounded picure of the author, but that will be just one of the pleasures and surprises for old and new fans of Frame's writing.

[* As a young woman Janet Frame worked as a housemaid in a Dunedin hotel and as a nursemaid in a Dunedin rest home. In later years she returned to live in Dunedin as successful world-famous author. As she pointed out herself, it was like a fairy tale.]