"Beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre" ~ The Australian

Skeletons of the fabulous

 

Felicity Plunkett of The Australian newspaper has reviewed two new Janet Frame titles that were recently published in Australia: The Mijo Tree (Penguin 2013) and Between My Father and the King (Wilkins Farago 2013).

 

It's a superbly intelligent and perceptive review, well worth reading (the reviewer is herself a poet).

 

 "Like the mijo seed, Frame sought an exceptional creative life. She tore the dark fruit of her early days apart and found in them seed for work that continues to appear, blossoming in this, her posthumous phase."

 

 

"Many of Janet Frame's stories are boned with the skeleton of the fabulous. With their 'once upon a time', their anthropomorphism and their small, clear fairytale phrasing, only gradually do they reveal their powerful musculature and darker currents."

 

 

"These two works are beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre."

Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

The Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

will be held on Monday the 10th of March 2014 at 6.15 pm

at the Adam Auditorium of the Wellington City Galley

Doors open at 5.45 pm

Admission is free

 

The Mouth of the Whale (The Power of Pictures)

by Gavin Bishop

 

In his lecture celebrated children's author and illustrator Gavin Bishop will focus on the role of illustration in literature.

 

The Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014 is sponsored by the New Zealand Society of Authors in association with the New Zealand Festival and the City Gallery Wellington.

 

 

 

Janet Frame stories in Slovenian

 

Vstopate v človeško srce

(You are now entering the human heart

and other stories)

Janet Frame

Lud Literatura

http://www.ludliteratura.si/knjiga/vstopate-v-clovesko-srce/

Still winning prizes

Ten years after her death, Janet Frame's writing is still picking up awards. The radio drama adaptation of her 3-volume autobiography AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (first broadcast on BBC4 last January) recently won the BBC Radio Drama Award for Best Series at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards.

Lorraine Ashbourne (who plays Janet Frame), Philip Glenister (who presented the award), Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose
(BBC Media Centre).

 

Congratulations to Sweet Talk, to Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose, and to all the actors!

Of course for such a win to take place there are also a host of other people that have contributed to the success of the final production in our own various ways, and I'm sure we are all feeling pleased and satisfied that the excellence of this adaptation has been acknowledged.

See more about the adaptation on Anita Sullivan's web page.

For more context see my earlier posts:

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/janet-frame-serial-shortlisted-for-bbc.html

 http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/bbc-adapts-janet-frames-autobiography.html

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/new-bbc-radio-adaptation.html

NZ Herald Greatest New Zealanders

As part of their 150th Anniversary celebrations late last year the New Zealand Herald ran a 'New Zealander of the Year' series in which they retrospectively named our 'Greatest New Zealanders'.

Janet Frame was accorded this honour twice: New Zealander of the Year 1957 ('Literary Spellbinder') when her first novel Owls Do Cry was published, and New Zealander of the Year 1983 ('A Writer's Story') when she published To the Is-Land, the first volume of her bestselling autobiography.

 

Janet Frame's last words

Cartoon © Tom Scott

First published in the Dominion Post 30 January 2004

(reproduced by kind permission)

 

This week marks the 10th anniversary of Janet Frame's death from leukemia on the 29th of January 2004 at Dunedin Hospital where she had been admitted only a little over 48 hours beforehand.

 

Until then, for the several months after she had been diagnosed with the terminal illness, my aunt had managed to stay at her own home with my help as companion and caregiver. We had the support of the Otago Hospice, of the district nurses and home help staff provided by the local health board, and the Meals on Wheels service, and also from the wonderful volunteers of the Cancer Society.

 

Close friends and family also rallied around. Janet was able to bid farewell to a host of her friends and family and colleagues over that time, and as she had lived her life, she approached her end with courage, wisdom, wit, good humour and a sense of adventure. She was strong and lucid and conscious to her very last breath. Only in those last two days when she was admitted to hospital did talking became too difficult for her, but even then she was still able to communicate by mouthing simple but heartfelt expressions such as "thank you".

 

Her last actual words were spoken early on the 27th January not long after she reached the emergency room at the hospital. The medical staff had indicated that she was approaching the end and that they would admit her to the oncology ward to try to make her as comfortable as possible. She said:

 

"So this is it, then."

 

The hunt for the Great Kiwi Classic

A Great Kiwi Classic: Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame. 

 

The New Zealand Book Council has launched a "hunt for the Great Kiwi Classic":  they are asking the book lovers of New Zealand to "help us choose the most loved Kiwi read".

 

They have asked readers to make their nominations on a special Facebook page:

 

www.facebook.com/greatkiwiclassic

 

or to email the Book Council at

 

greatkiwiclassic@bookcouncil.org.nz

 

The selected classic New Zealand book(s) will be the focus of a session at this year's Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

 

Titles by Janet Frame are in the lead

 

Counting the nominations on the Facebook page so far, titles by Janet Frame outnumber those of any other author. Novelist Maurice Gee comes in a close second, also with a variety of titles selected. Janet Frame's novel Owls Do Cry has more votes than any other nominated title (although as you'd expect her 3 volume autobiography collected under the title An Angel at My Table also has a strong representation). Coming a close second is the Edmonds Cook Book and the novel Coal Flat by Bill Pearson currently appears to be running at third.

 

Other strong contenders are of course The Bone People by Keri Hulme, and Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace have several greatly loved titles nominated.

 

The humorous publications by Barry Crump and the Footrot Flats cartoon series also make an appearance.

 

Poetry lovers have also made an appearance (Janet Frame's The Goose Bath has been mentioned). The Kiwi love for our poets seems to me to be one of our best kept secrets. The best loved popular poets such as Janet Frame, Hone Tuwhare, Brian Turner and Sam Hunt have all produced long lasting bestsellers that have moved outside the influence of the literary elitists and the ivory tower.

 

It seems a bit silly to me to have a recipe book jostling for attention with classic New Zealand fiction, so I do hope that the convenors of this exercise relax their criteria a little and allow 'winners' in several categories - fiction, non-fiction, lifestyle, contemporary and historical, as well as poetry.

 

But of course no matter what the organisers choose and however they manage their decisions, their main goal must be to spark discussion and generate interest in the reading riches that New Zealand has provided - which is a good thing!

 

And whether or not Owls Do Cry or An Angel at My Table (or any other of Frame's greatly loved and best-selling masterpieces) are recognised as THE Great Kiwi Classic, nothing can take away from the fact that they are great Kiwi classics!

 

Owls Do Cry was first published in 1957 to instant awe and acclaim - it had rapid sales and a quick reprint. And it has never been out of print in well over 50 years! (What other NZ classic can make such a claim? Probably only the Edmonds Cook Book!!)

 

Since 1957 Owls Do Cry has had dozens of different editions and hundreds of reprints all around the world. Its first foreign translation was in 1961 and it continues to have repeat foreign editions published (new editions in German and Italian most recently) and to be translated into new languages (the most recent new translations have been into Swedish and Turkish).

 

In 2007 the Janet Frame Literary Trust released a 50th anniversary edition through Random House NZ.

 

In 2014 it is time to refresh the publication cycle of this great New Zealand classic once again, and we have an exciting new paperback edition coming up for release before the middle of the year - a Text Classic Edition of Owls Do Cry. (More details soon!)

 

We have also recently negotiated a renewal of our agreement with Bolinda Publishing to distribute their very successful audio book of Owls Do Cry internationally.

 

And finally - I hope to have good news very soon about a new UK edition of Owls Do Cry.