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Intensive Care
This book is a tale of two worlds: one that we know, and one that we foresee - and fear. It begins with Tom Livingstone, young and wounded in the trenches of Flanders: falling in love with his nurse, and learning first the value of life, and, much later, the value of death. Through his experiences and dreams we come to know and understand Tom and his family. and we gain a vivid, recognisable, poignant image of their world. The story then moves to another world, an all too believable fantasy place, hardened by the horrors of a third global war: a world that has learned well the lessons that Tom had to work out for himself a century before. It is described in the deceptively simple language of an autistic girl, who sits under Tom's old pear tree, waiting for the eugenic exterminators to take her away...
342 pages, Paperback
Published February 17, 1994
4 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Janet Frame
64 books489 followersThe fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become well known. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book (The Lagoon and Other Stories) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a planned lobotomy.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 5, 2019
Janet Frame sometimes reminds me of an earthier Virginia Woolf, with some Barbara Comyns blended in for good measure. Much of this book consists of rotating perspectives of characters reflecting on the past. Perhaps some recollections are warped alternate versions of the past. The Guy Fawkes Day events particularly stood out as surreal and nightmarish. The first two parts of the book culminate in multiple instances of sudden tragedy. The final section is one long drawn-out tragedy, having diverged into a dystopic future set in the same small New Zealand town from earlier in the book. Next to the decaying family homestead featured in the first sections lives the family of a young autistic woman named Milly. Most of this final part is narrated by Milly, who is penning her thoughts in a series of notebooks as she and everyone else in the town await a dreadful day of reckoning. The suspense inherent in the nature of this impending day pilots the narrative through the maze of Milly's digressions. Frame uses themes of war, aging, outsider status, human kindness, and human cruelty as connective tissue between what otherwise seem to be disparate elements of one novel. I wish I could say I liked this more than I did, especially when I sense the passion in the reviews of the other people on GR who read this. Unfortunately it simply did not resonate with me in the same way the other Frame books I've read did. I will continue reading Janet Frame, though, as her writing always casts a spell on me—this one was just not as strong.
August 26, 2021
Since there is no plot summary on the back cover, which is just as well because I prefer going into something being as ignorant as possible, I was in fact completely ignorant. I don't wish to ruin that for you, assumed reader, so I will limit my comments to two: Janet Frame is shockingly talented, and this novel is riven with dissonance. I thank Jane Campion for bringing Frame to my attention, for it was only in the process of working through her filmic oeuvre that I learned of Frame's life, literature, and near lobotomy. Although I am not convinced that the gambles in Intensive Care paid off, Frame's writing itself is a discomfiting marvel and something absolutely worth pursuing.
January 13, 2018
Eagle Street, Waipori City, South Island, New Zealand, the World. (page 31)
Decades. Generations. Wars. The Livingstone family pear tree stands, grows, flowers, and produces fruit.
Breathe in the gas mask, father, or the poisonous air like a scorpion stings your lung. (From page 210, tho’ it is repeated many times throughout the early half of the book.)
Life and death. Dreams and realities.
Surreal. Who is declared human, who is declared animal. Who will live, who will die. The Livingstone family pear tree has grown, twisted and old, enjoyed by many as it flowers, produces fruit, gives shade, and shelter, until it is seen as a danger when a branch falls off, and is seen as a nuisance because the roots can cause trouble with the sewer lines; the tree is cut down.
…what was a tree anyway when the human race was threatened? (page 292)
What a strange book, at times terrifying, other times humorous, sometimes beautiful, and then back to the terror—I love it. It is dream-like, and often the unreality of it suddenly feels too real, just because if you let your mind wander a little bit to peek a wee bit over the fence into history, and if you pay a visit to the current events of our time, it becomes painfully clear how human nature can be cruel.
Janet Frame leads the way into a world post WWI, and shines her light into the soul of humanity. Obsession and loneliness. Growing old. Dying a natural death. Murder. The next generation, and the next after that, are just as lonely, just as obsessive, and disturbed. The world changes, and the people fall behind and wait n’ see, while distant governments make the “hard decisions.” Generations of people live day to day, going about their business, a new version of normal comes into being, the survivors adjust. An autistic girl becomes a woman in a future of uncertainty after another war—her 26th birthday happens to fall on The Deciding Day. Scarcity causing the inhumane selection of undesirables to be executed to become resources for the remaining population on The Deciding Day, painfully echoing the genocide of Nazi Germany. (Keep in mind, this book was published in 1970. WWII was only 25 years past and still fresh for those who lived it, the Berlin Wall was firmly in place. The Cold War was just as cold as ever. The Vietnam War was ongoing, the protest marches against that war were in full swing, and the Kent State student deaths too fresh.)
The people of Waipori City made gardens, and grew wheat in their backyards. The myth of the Reconstructed Man, Sandy, a soldier damaged by the last war, with new gold skin, and new eyes from a dead person (Admittedly he is not handsome for he was burned with the bomb that writes its name on you with graphite and with the other bomb that leaves a glare in the sky and blinds you…page 243.) People go to the one man who has the power to choose to plead for the life of their handicapped child, or an elderly parent, or an infirm spouse. Some people disappear, melting away to live in the remote areas in the mountains, hoping to avoid the end that is planned for them by a computer in a university office. A manuscript created for the sake of posterity is all that’s left to remind us of how it once was in Waipori City before the Decision Day, before the Human Delineation Act. The one man who did not sleep the sleep of forgetfulness during the Sleep Days, will not forget who wrote it, and why.
…how even in spite of the Classification and the Sleep Days the animal in man could not be subdued… (from page 342)
Scary isn’t it?
Decades. Generations. Wars. The Livingstone family pear tree stands, grows, flowers, and produces fruit.
Breathe in the gas mask, father, or the poisonous air like a scorpion stings your lung. (From page 210, tho’ it is repeated many times throughout the early half of the book.)
Life and death. Dreams and realities.
Surreal. Who is declared human, who is declared animal. Who will live, who will die. The Livingstone family pear tree has grown, twisted and old, enjoyed by many as it flowers, produces fruit, gives shade, and shelter, until it is seen as a danger when a branch falls off, and is seen as a nuisance because the roots can cause trouble with the sewer lines; the tree is cut down.
…what was a tree anyway when the human race was threatened? (page 292)
What a strange book, at times terrifying, other times humorous, sometimes beautiful, and then back to the terror—I love it. It is dream-like, and often the unreality of it suddenly feels too real, just because if you let your mind wander a little bit to peek a wee bit over the fence into history, and if you pay a visit to the current events of our time, it becomes painfully clear how human nature can be cruel.
Janet Frame leads the way into a world post WWI, and shines her light into the soul of humanity. Obsession and loneliness. Growing old. Dying a natural death. Murder. The next generation, and the next after that, are just as lonely, just as obsessive, and disturbed. The world changes, and the people fall behind and wait n’ see, while distant governments make the “hard decisions.” Generations of people live day to day, going about their business, a new version of normal comes into being, the survivors adjust. An autistic girl becomes a woman in a future of uncertainty after another war—her 26th birthday happens to fall on The Deciding Day. Scarcity causing the inhumane selection of undesirables to be executed to become resources for the remaining population on The Deciding Day, painfully echoing the genocide of Nazi Germany. (Keep in mind, this book was published in 1970. WWII was only 25 years past and still fresh for those who lived it, the Berlin Wall was firmly in place. The Cold War was just as cold as ever. The Vietnam War was ongoing, the protest marches against that war were in full swing, and the Kent State student deaths too fresh.)
The people of Waipori City made gardens, and grew wheat in their backyards. The myth of the Reconstructed Man, Sandy, a soldier damaged by the last war, with new gold skin, and new eyes from a dead person (Admittedly he is not handsome for he was burned with the bomb that writes its name on you with graphite and with the other bomb that leaves a glare in the sky and blinds you…page 243.) People go to the one man who has the power to choose to plead for the life of their handicapped child, or an elderly parent, or an infirm spouse. Some people disappear, melting away to live in the remote areas in the mountains, hoping to avoid the end that is planned for them by a computer in a university office. A manuscript created for the sake of posterity is all that’s left to remind us of how it once was in Waipori City before the Decision Day, before the Human Delineation Act. The one man who did not sleep the sleep of forgetfulness during the Sleep Days, will not forget who wrote it, and why.
…how even in spite of the Classification and the Sleep Days the animal in man could not be subdued… (from page 342)
Scary isn’t it?
July 28, 2011
Probably my favourite Janet Frame novel. I like the movement through the parts of the novel from bad to worse to worst, and this novel definitely showed Frame's sense of humour. I will say that tThe third part was rather too long. Plus I liked the overarching theme of the novel - the importance of caring for others, and the destruction that follows when caring is ignored.
April 3, 2009
just about done with this jammer & it might be the most psychedelically depressive meditation on love & death ive ever read. in other words, great!
January 16, 2018
Is the world we live in, or *will* live in, the world we deserve? Or is it those least deserving who will become its victims? Or, might both these potentialities, in fact, come to pass?
While ‘Intensive Care’ is too complex and nuanced a book to expect simple, pat answers from – and this complexity accounts in part for its brilliance – the way its author bravely poses such questions, without once straying into sermonizing, solidifies its importance as a work of literature. Within the wreckage of two World Wars, Frame locates the seeds of a still more dire future, and of a society which turns to a mechanized barbarism in a futile attempt at saving itself.
(*spoilers follow*)
In this twenty-first-century world still (from Frame’s circa-1970 vantage point) to come, the powers that be light upon a monstrous solution to the otherwise certain prospect of starvation and social chaos. Here, even the most mundane defects and shortcomings pose a risk of seeing one classified as non-human, and thereby fit only for the lab, the zoo, or the slaughterhouse. Comparisons to Nazi Germany are certainly not inappropriate, but this campaign of mass murder less resembles the Holocaust than the earlier T-4 euthanasia program, with “imperfect” people rubbed out by the thousands under the guise of compassion and mercy. Of course, none of these measures are ultimately able to stop what remains of civilization from falling in on itself, and the novel ends with the Waipori City of its primary setting burning to the ground, and Colin Monk, the computer scientist once responsible for determining who would live and die, lost in despair, expecting his own imminent death just as his wife and children have been killed.
If ‘Intensive Care’ consisted only of the ending “prophecy” section (which is novella-length on its own) I don’t think it would have anywhere near the impact it does. But the way in which generations of mounting tragedy, personal and global, culminate with the government-sanctioned destruction of sweet-natured, inquisitive Milly Galbraith, offers a final, bitter lesson in both the necessity and the limits of care. Events occurring in one time find their reflections in another: Milly’s impending fate recalls Tom Livingstone’s euthanasia of the elderly, senile Ciss Everest, while the apocalyptic third World War multiplies the death and destruction of the first two, the worst fears of societal and environmental ruin having come terribly true. Things prefigured earlier in the book happen with an unsurprising inevitability, the dreaming child from the introductory poem taking on form perhaps more than once, but most obviously in the person of “doll-normill” Milly, who, like those “born dead or sent away,” finally cannot escape her doom.
To be honest, I’m not sure that the above analysis really does justice to Frame’s vision. There is much left open to interpretation, in the use of imagery and in the story itself – for instance, there’s Colin Monk’s “twin” Sandy, whose existence seems improbable yet (at least from Milly’s perspective) entirely convincing. There are also Fiona Livingstone’s letters to her father, in which, as a spreading cancer consumes more and more of her body, she seemingly retreats into a dreamed or imagined version of her early life. I don’t doubt that a second reading will reveal more of these strange, intuitive connections, as ‘Intensive Care’ turns out to be a novel of exceptional depth and subtlety. Highly recommended for those readers who don’t need every loose end neatly tied.
While ‘Intensive Care’ is too complex and nuanced a book to expect simple, pat answers from – and this complexity accounts in part for its brilliance – the way its author bravely poses such questions, without once straying into sermonizing, solidifies its importance as a work of literature. Within the wreckage of two World Wars, Frame locates the seeds of a still more dire future, and of a society which turns to a mechanized barbarism in a futile attempt at saving itself.
(*spoilers follow*)
In this twenty-first-century world still (from Frame’s circa-1970 vantage point) to come, the powers that be light upon a monstrous solution to the otherwise certain prospect of starvation and social chaos. Here, even the most mundane defects and shortcomings pose a risk of seeing one classified as non-human, and thereby fit only for the lab, the zoo, or the slaughterhouse. Comparisons to Nazi Germany are certainly not inappropriate, but this campaign of mass murder less resembles the Holocaust than the earlier T-4 euthanasia program, with “imperfect” people rubbed out by the thousands under the guise of compassion and mercy. Of course, none of these measures are ultimately able to stop what remains of civilization from falling in on itself, and the novel ends with the Waipori City of its primary setting burning to the ground, and Colin Monk, the computer scientist once responsible for determining who would live and die, lost in despair, expecting his own imminent death just as his wife and children have been killed.
If ‘Intensive Care’ consisted only of the ending “prophecy” section (which is novella-length on its own) I don’t think it would have anywhere near the impact it does. But the way in which generations of mounting tragedy, personal and global, culminate with the government-sanctioned destruction of sweet-natured, inquisitive Milly Galbraith, offers a final, bitter lesson in both the necessity and the limits of care. Events occurring in one time find their reflections in another: Milly’s impending fate recalls Tom Livingstone’s euthanasia of the elderly, senile Ciss Everest, while the apocalyptic third World War multiplies the death and destruction of the first two, the worst fears of societal and environmental ruin having come terribly true. Things prefigured earlier in the book happen with an unsurprising inevitability, the dreaming child from the introductory poem taking on form perhaps more than once, but most obviously in the person of “doll-normill” Milly, who, like those “born dead or sent away,” finally cannot escape her doom.
To be honest, I’m not sure that the above analysis really does justice to Frame’s vision. There is much left open to interpretation, in the use of imagery and in the story itself – for instance, there’s Colin Monk’s “twin” Sandy, whose existence seems improbable yet (at least from Milly’s perspective) entirely convincing. There are also Fiona Livingstone’s letters to her father, in which, as a spreading cancer consumes more and more of her body, she seemingly retreats into a dreamed or imagined version of her early life. I don’t doubt that a second reading will reveal more of these strange, intuitive connections, as ‘Intensive Care’ turns out to be a novel of exceptional depth and subtlety. Highly recommended for those readers who don’t need every loose end neatly tied.
January 26, 2022
4.5 Stars.
Though this isn’t Janet Frame’s strongest novel, it is a very interesting read. It is basically like 5 stories in one novel they are all connected. Part 3 (which is kind of like Science Fiction) reads a little long. I couldn’t give this book 5 stars for some of the shortcomings of the novel. But I also couldn’t deduct a full star either. Too bad we cannot do half stars.
Though this isn’t Janet Frame’s strongest novel, it is a very interesting read. It is basically like 5 stories in one novel they are all connected. Part 3 (which is kind of like Science Fiction) reads a little long. I couldn’t give this book 5 stars for some of the shortcomings of the novel. But I also couldn’t deduct a full star either. Too bad we cannot do half stars.
May 20, 2022
A great read until the overly long third book , the story of Milly Galbraith. The third book seemed so disconnected with the rest that I couldn't
see the purpose of it. Very strange and I found the misspellings unnecessary and distracting.
see the purpose of it. Very strange and I found the misspellings unnecessary and distracting.
Read
August 3, 2025Pretty brutal. I think I would have got more out of it if I’d read the whole thing in one sitting, which I did for the final third of the book. Some scarily accurate predictions/criticisms of modern society, especially knowing Frame’s own background. Keen to read her more famous books now.
July 13, 2018
Actual rating: 4.5/5
March 12, 2017
I struggled to finish this, because I simply did not care about any of the characters. It didn't help that they appear serially, with no continuity between them. I wanted to read some New Zealand authors, and it seems Janet Frame is widely praised and admired. Maybe I picked the wrong book, but after this, I'm not willing to give her another chance. Her writing (not her storytelling or her characters) is what kept me going, but it was not enough to make these sorry people worth my time.
The last of three parts of this novel was absolutely tedious, with an unbearable idiot-savant sort of narrator making adroit observations about her local world while creatively misspelling many words because of her disability. I'm sure there must be some clever reason why a skillful writer would want to tell these three (or sort-of five) stories and patch them together and pretend they are a novel, but that reason escapes me.
The last of three parts of this novel was absolutely tedious, with an unbearable idiot-savant sort of narrator making adroit observations about her local world while creatively misspelling many words because of her disability. I'm sure there must be some clever reason why a skillful writer would want to tell these three (or sort-of five) stories and patch them together and pretend they are a novel, but that reason escapes me.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews