Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Forthcoming book of new stories by Janet Frame


GORSE IS NOT PEOPLE: NEW & UNCOLLECTED STORIES
by Janet Frame

The cover has been designed, the proofs have been read, and the book is off to the printers.

Due out in August 2012 from Penguin NZ:


"This brand new collection of 28 short stories by Janet Frame spans the length of her career and contains some of the best she wrote. None of these stories has been published in a collection before, and more than half are published for the first time in Gorse is Not People.
The title story caused Frame a setback in 1954, when Charles Brasch rejected it for publication in Landfall and, along with others for one reason or other, deliberately remained unpublished during her lifetime. Previously published pieces have appeared in Harper's Bazaar, the NZ Listener, the New Zealand School Journal, Landfall and The New Yorker over the years, and one otherwise unpublished piece, 'The Gravy Boat', was read aloud by Frame for a radio broadcast in 1953.
In these stories readers will recognise familiar themes, scenes, characters and locations from Frame's writing and life, and each offers a fresh fictional transformation that will captivate and absorb."

Click here to download a high resolution file of the jacket, which features a reproduction of the 1946 painting 'Upper Moutere' by the late great NZ artist Toss Woollaston.

4 comments:

bluey_york said...

This is fantastic news. Ive just been introduced to JF and have finished faces in the water while on a lovely road trip from Napier to Auckland. I'm fascinated with Frame's work. Can't wait until this new book is published. I hope she would have been happy with it.

CM.

Wee Birdy said...

Such exciting news. I need some new Frame in my life right now!

BRENTON said...

Another treat for winter reading, Pamela.

Pamela Gordon said...

Glad to hear you are keen! It will be so good for these stories to see the light of day at last.

And have no fear about how Janet Frame would feel about the book - after all, she wrote it! And she did say "Posthumous publishing is the only form of literary decency left". She designed her career to include the publication of works that had been left behind for various reasons.