Interview with Ramona Koval on Janet Frame's posthumous publishing

Ramona Koval was recently in New Zealand publicising By the Book: A Reader's Guide to Life (Text Publishing).

She has also written Speaking Volumes: Conversations with Remarkable Writers.

Ramona Koval was the presenter of "The Book Show" ABC Radio National (Australia) for many years.

Here is a link to a five year old interview Australian publisher Andrew Wilkins and I did with Ramona Koval on the sadly now defunct The Book Show:

'Posthumous Publishing: Janet Frame's Poetry'.

I was in Australia for the launch of the Australian edition of The Goose Bath published by Wilkins Farago.  This was one of my first major live interviews and I was pretty nervous, but I couldn't have been in better hands.

Framesque WTF-ness (BookieMonster)

There's a fantastic new review of Janet Frame's  In the Memorial Room on New Zealand's popular BookieMonster blog, in which a new piece of critical terminology is posited: Framesque WTF-ness.

"No, seriously, WTF?" is the response in this case to Janet Frame's protagonist Harry Gill's reference to the feminist revolution as "the age of the raging clitoris".

More snippets from this delightfully fresh, enthusiastic, and perceptive review:

"The book is imbued with a sense of hilarity, and the humour is laugh-out-loud material."

"The writing is exactly what we expect from Frame – gorgeous, delirious and shining with delight. Her amazing ability to pile on sound and word texture is just as evident in this book."

Bookie Monster, clearly a Frame fan, also recommends this new posthumous novel as "a wonderful introduction" to Frame's work for those who haven't read her before.

PW Picks: Janet Frame

 

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY has picked Janet Frame's Between My Father and the King as one of their 'Best new books for the week of May 13, 2013.'

The PW starred review for Between My Father and the King says that it "showcases her extraordinary gifts as an imaginative storyteller with a singular viewpoint. Frame grasps an image and the emotion behind it in a few spare words."

"These stories—with themes of despair, disappointment, and wonder, underscored by Frame’s melancholy and vivid turns of phrase—are beautifully rendered."

The recommendations continue:

The Kirkus starred review for this book is now online:

"A treasure-trove of stories."

 

"A powerful collection."

 
And from Booklist (April 15, 2013) yet another starred review:

"writerly genius in every sentence"

 

"told with charming and often wicked wit" 

 

 

The Christian Science Monitor has included Between My Father and the King in their list of 12 promising fiction titles for Spring 2013:

  

"This posthumous collection ... takes readers from despair to wonder and on to deep meaning, always accompanied by powerful writing."

Released this week in the USA by Counterpoint Press.

The New Zealand edition of Between My Father and the King was published last year by Penguin Books NZ under the title Gorse is Not People and was a top ten NZ Fiction bestseller (Nielsen BookScan) for the year 2012.



You have new mail

 

Snail mail! Packages! Here's a pic of the latest swag of gorgeous 'author' copies of recent Janet Frame releases and reprints, from South Korea, Sweden, Germany, Australia, the UK and America.

 

It's been a thrill to see the four Swedish volumes published last year by Modernista (an earlier package seems to have got lost in the mail). The four hardback books are beautifully designed and presented with attractive jackets.

 

 

Scented Gardens For the Blind

 

 

Faces in the Water

 

 

Owls Do Cry

 

 

The Edge of the Alphabet

 

Swedish Reviews
 

See Litteratur Magazinet for an essay (in Swedish) by Sebastian Lönnlöv on Janet Frame's "fascinating oeuvre" (18 February 2013).

 

See Aftonbladet for a review (in Swedish) by Pia Bergström (December 2012).

For some other Swedish reviews of the Modernista collection of Janet Frame classic novels, see my earlier blog post.

 

"quite perfectly posthumous" (LiteraryMinded)

Author Angela Meyer of Australian blog LiteraryMinded has written about her experience of reviewing Janet Frame's In the Memorial Room for The Australian newspaper.

She says "it felt like a weighty task", but: "as soon as I began reading the novel, it was like sitting down very comfortably with an old friend; a very smart, witty, entertaining old friend."

In the comments thread, Meyer shares an interesting insight:

"With the dead writer character Frame is also exploring the glory afforded to authors (good or mediocre) after their death; the way they are picked over, used, in a way; the way the meaning of their life and work changes. And with full knowledge that in life one can hardly control one’s public image, let alone in death, by releasing a posthumous novel Frame is at least a part of the conversation on her own status as a dead author, if you get my drift. It’s wonderfully clever."

The post on Literary Minded can be found here.

Angela Meyer's review can be found here. 

Who is Janet Frame?

Image: Back jacket of The Pocket Mirror

(George Braziller, New York, first hardback edition, 1967)

Author photograph by Jerry Bauer

 

Who is Janet Frame? She is the author of the book. Janet Frame cannot be reduced to the status of one of her fictional characters. She is not trapped within the pages of her book like an ancient insect preserved in amber. She wrote it. Hers is the consciousness that stands behind the whole work.

Hidden depths

 

 

It has been fascinating to observe the wide range of responses to Janet Frame's 'new' novel In the Memorial Room. As poet Paula Green pointed out in her review for the New Zealand Herald, "This novel is like a prism that becomes something other as the light changes."

 

The novel is deceptively simple and can be enjoyed on the level of a comedy, but there is so much more there to reward a deeper reading - or multiple readings - as well.

 

Here's a gem of a response from acclaimed Kiwi novelist Catherine Chidgey (in a Facebook post reproduced with kind permission): "Among other things, it's a meditation on the creative process, and the obstacles to it, and manages to be both witty and moving."