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The Lagoon
This collection of stories - Janet Frame's first published book - appeared in New Zealand in 1951, while she was confined in a mental hospital. It won the Hubert Church Award, and a threatened brain operation was averted. These stories bring into focus a crucial turning point in her life.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Janet Frame
64 books488 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 - 30 of 42 reviews
June 1, 2019
it is really too bad that janet frame is so little known outside of New Zealand. although some may know of her from the film based on her life, An Angel at My Table, by the marvelous director Jane Campion. the writing in this collection of sad, strange stories is at times spiky and sharp, and other times gently hallucinatory, almost as if written in some kind of fugue state. death and madness abound, but softly rendered. fascinating! a wonderful and odd little book. Janet Frame must have been a wonderful and odd person.
here's an interesting fact, well-known to lovers of the author: the stories in this collection saved her from a lobotomy! according to my best friend, wikipedia:
The volume was awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary prizes. This resulted in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy.
whew, close call!
here's an interesting fact, well-known to lovers of the author: the stories in this collection saved her from a lobotomy! according to my best friend, wikipedia:
The volume was awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary prizes. This resulted in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy.
whew, close call!
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February 27, 2024Normally I love Janet Frame - but I just wasn't in the mood for this look at her early childhood memories. There is something child-like in the writing, and maybe if I hadn't read her later books I might also have been charmed - I guess I'm used to the sophisticated Frame - see my review of her Living in the Maniototo.
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February 16, 2020Il libro che ha evitato a Frame la lobotomia.
November 11, 2017
I hadn’t heard of Janet Frame until I found two of her short story collections in an Oxfam last year. The blurb and write-ups were very intriguing, non more so than the fact her work in this book, upon winning a literary award, saved her from a leukotomy whilst in a mental asylum diagnosed with schizophrenia.
With this in mind, there is a haunting air of instability that permeates the twenty-four stories written in the late 1940s. They are delicate slivers of life in New Zealand as young, innocent girls or fragile young women. A lot of the stories seem to draw on Frame’s own life; either taking place in mental hospitals or recounts of life on the homestead as a little girl experiencing new best friends, strict parents or dubious tales of a supposedly murderous grandmother. They are very short fragments and thoughts, meditative but incredibly powerful. She writes with such pathos and poignancy that you become absorbed in an inherent sadness within the words; her prose and its tone are truly beautiful and resolutely struck a chord ever more strongly as the book went on.
Unsurprisingly, the book is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s writing so if you like her or just want to appreciate some beautiful, melancholic short stories, I strongly urge you to give this a go.
With this in mind, there is a haunting air of instability that permeates the twenty-four stories written in the late 1940s. They are delicate slivers of life in New Zealand as young, innocent girls or fragile young women. A lot of the stories seem to draw on Frame’s own life; either taking place in mental hospitals or recounts of life on the homestead as a little girl experiencing new best friends, strict parents or dubious tales of a supposedly murderous grandmother. They are very short fragments and thoughts, meditative but incredibly powerful. She writes with such pathos and poignancy that you become absorbed in an inherent sadness within the words; her prose and its tone are truly beautiful and resolutely struck a chord ever more strongly as the book went on.
Unsurprisingly, the book is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s writing so if you like her or just want to appreciate some beautiful, melancholic short stories, I strongly urge you to give this a go.
June 21, 2016
Janet Frame is a much overlooked writer, at least here in America, that hails from New Zealand and wrote in the 1950's and on into the 70's where she was at her most prolific. The collection of stories in "The Lagoon" was her first published book and is the celebrated work that saved her from a lobotomy. For that historical fact alone, it is a must read for any bibliophile. The stories seem to be auto-biographical as they alternate between tales of young girls growing up in New Zealand and experiences in a mental asylum. Every story is a wonderfully written narrative but all have a somber tone or at least a bittersweet feeling to them. Some are written in a stream of consciousness style, while others are a straight narrative. All are done well. Her "experiences" in the mental institutions are especially poignant and will leave the reader with a sense of dismay as we are introduced to the sometimes whimsical, sometimes fantastical but always lonely thoughts of the mental patient. A very good read, pulling emotions from the reader and I will read some of her other works in the future.
March 20, 2016
Janet Frame's The Lagoon is a collection of her short stories & was the first book that she had published. The Lagoon famously saved Frame from being lobotomised, when her doctor read an article about Frame's book winning an award. The Lagoon is full of sad, beautiful, lost, dreamy stories. Many are told from the point of view of young girls growing up in small-town New Zealand, and some are narrated by young women living in psychiatric institutions. Seeing the parallels between these stories & Frame's autobiography, it is clear that Frame has drawn inspiration for these stories from her own life. It is interesting to compare The Lagoon to Frame's later work - her style is less refined here, her themes less sophisticated.
The closing lines of the final story are really sad, I think that Frame must have felt this way a lot of the time: "I think I must be frozen inside with no heart to speak of. I think I've got the wrong way of looking at Life."
The closing lines of the final story are really sad, I think that Frame must have felt this way a lot of the time: "I think I must be frozen inside with no heart to speak of. I think I've got the wrong way of looking at Life."
February 19, 2020
Some of these stories are great, some of them are quite bad, and then some of them aren’t really anything at all.
June 9, 2025
“Father peering this way and that like the moon in the poem”
Some of the stories seem a little too similar. Being so familiar with Frame’s work I think doesn’t necessarily work in my favour here. Character’s fate gets a little tired especially when the older sister dies in everything. Although, what is one to expect from the time she was writing? One of my favourite parts of Frames writing as how it stands as an exemplar of how you can’t escape fact in fiction. Life influences art and what you know always becomes what you tell. This set of short stories was written at a time after everything she writes about, so naturally writes about the time before. That makes verrryyy little sense but I don’t care at this point. Anyways there were still some fucking heart wrenching parts in these stories and she still manages to describe the world in a way I know but couldn’t even fathom being able to portray it that way!!! It’s just like the sister always dies but obviously because that would impact an author!!!!
Some of the stories seem a little too similar. Being so familiar with Frame’s work I think doesn’t necessarily work in my favour here. Character’s fate gets a little tired especially when the older sister dies in everything. Although, what is one to expect from the time she was writing? One of my favourite parts of Frames writing as how it stands as an exemplar of how you can’t escape fact in fiction. Life influences art and what you know always becomes what you tell. This set of short stories was written at a time after everything she writes about, so naturally writes about the time before. That makes verrryyy little sense but I don’t care at this point. Anyways there were still some fucking heart wrenching parts in these stories and she still manages to describe the world in a way I know but couldn’t even fathom being able to portray it that way!!! It’s just like the sister always dies but obviously because that would impact an author!!!!
June 30, 2022
Underlig men vacker.
January 4, 2008
mostly, the stories are about little kids and new zealand. i would recommend this book for fans of short beautiful fiction, especially the salinger fans among us. perfect for your commute & pleasant on repeat reads.
April 19, 2012
Janet Frame's language is astonishing. She brings us to see things from a slant or side angle. This was her first book, a book of short stories, and many of them are told from the simple view of a child or young adult. All the more powerful for the sometimes uncomfortable truths they convey.
October 28, 2018
Janet Frame’s debut collection of stories, The Lagoon, collects together pieces she wrote during the late 1940s and early 1950s, a time when she was repeatedly hospitalized in psychiatric institutions. The collection was initially published in 1951 by The Caxton Press (there have been numerous subsequent editions) and in 1952 won the Hubert Church Memorial Award, a New Zealand literary prize established in 1945 and given annually to the best first book of prose published during the previous year. The book established Frame’s reputation as a daring prose stylist and fearless storyteller who focused her art primarily on childhood perceptions of the adult world. The stories are loosely structured, rarely dramatic and occasionally come across as surreal or dreamlike. Several of the stories are built around a family event of some sort, such as an outing or a holiday, in which children interact with the natural world while forming alliances and making observations about their siblings, their parents or other adults. Some situate the narrator in a grown-up environment reminiscing about or recalling an earlier time in his or her life. The trusting and ingenuous perspective that dominates the stories concerning children is often threatened or endangered by the more serious and weighty concerns of those around them, creating a kind of push-pull effect as the children are thrust into the adult world and compelled to acknowledge it. But we discover too that the adults in Frame’s stories are not always reliable, the men sometimes drunk, the women often distracted, confused or depressed. Read in sequence, the twenty-four stories collected in this volume create the impression of an author of prose fiction who, while trying to establish her voice through experimentation, is actively seeking ways to stretch the limits of the genre. Though the fragmentary nature of some of the stories in The Lagoon mark it as a youthful work, it remains a significant document that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary writer who over the next fifty years would produce one masterpiece after another.
January 19, 2025
"I am wanting to write a story today. I am wanting more than anything to write a story. I am sitting on my bed with my typewriter, typing words that are not a story." - Introduction to Jan Godfrey
Having never heard of Janet Frame previously, this book of short stories looked appealing on the library shelf. The Lagoon and other stories is a vast collection of early writings that centre on the experience of not only Janet, but others observed in the mental hospital she resided in.
Most, if not all, of the short stories in this collection are from the perspective of, or focus in on an individual experiencing mental illness, if not Janet herself. This, at times, can cause the reading to feel disjointed or non sequitur, but gives an interesting insight into how it can often feel living with a mental illness.
Throughout this collection, it is evident that Janet is quite observant but not always able to comprehend the realities of the "real world", though she is able to oft explain away the percieved world through the lense of mental illness. While not an easy read without having the mental fortitude for it, it is an informative one to view the world from the perspective of those who are often overlooked or looked down on.
"We were all walking inside oursleves. We were sitting in little brown summer-houses, and touching the brown picket-fences of our minds. ... we were't running home, we were running from ourselves." Excerpt from The Park
Having never heard of Janet Frame previously, this book of short stories looked appealing on the library shelf. The Lagoon and other stories is a vast collection of early writings that centre on the experience of not only Janet, but others observed in the mental hospital she resided in.
Most, if not all, of the short stories in this collection are from the perspective of, or focus in on an individual experiencing mental illness, if not Janet herself. This, at times, can cause the reading to feel disjointed or non sequitur, but gives an interesting insight into how it can often feel living with a mental illness.
Throughout this collection, it is evident that Janet is quite observant but not always able to comprehend the realities of the "real world", though she is able to oft explain away the percieved world through the lense of mental illness. While not an easy read without having the mental fortitude for it, it is an informative one to view the world from the perspective of those who are often overlooked or looked down on.
"We were all walking inside oursleves. We were sitting in little brown summer-houses, and touching the brown picket-fences of our minds. ... we were't running home, we were running from ourselves." Excerpt from The Park
January 28, 2019
Aside from “The Bed Jacket” and “The Park,” this collection falls short of its hype as the “book that saved Janet Frame from a lobotomy!” Her style in these two is stream-of-consciousness or spontaneous prose-like, flowing, beautiful, and revelatory of a life the average person knows nothing about.
Several stories such as “My Cousins” and “Child” convey a childhood nostalgia that I enjoyed (especially when considering her angst and retrospective idealizations are occurring in an asylum).
Aside from these gems, I can not recommend this as a purchase; borrow it from someone or get it in a library, but don’t waste your money.
Several stories such as “My Cousins” and “Child” convey a childhood nostalgia that I enjoyed (especially when considering her angst and retrospective idealizations are occurring in an asylum).
Aside from these gems, I can not recommend this as a purchase; borrow it from someone or get it in a library, but don’t waste your money.
March 21, 2019
I'm really not sure what to say about this collection of.....scribblings? Some are barely a page long, few are long enough to capture the attention. How I managed to struggle through it all, I'm really not sure. Without wishing to seem mean, this just felt like the ramblings of a somewhat troubled mind, and I'm a little surprised that it was published to be honest.
Her later work is much better, but she wrote this when she wasn't in the best of places.
Her later work is much better, but she wrote this when she wasn't in the best of places.
April 4, 2023
“I think I must be frozen inside with no heart to speak of. I think I’ve got the wrong way of looking at life.”
So haunting and emotional to go through this little book of stories that quite literally saved the author’s life. “My Last Story” is something that I deeply resonated with when I first heard it and I think that, as a writer it will never quite leave me.
Best stories: The Secret, Jan Godfrey, Spirit, The birds began to sing, The pictures, My Last Story
So haunting and emotional to go through this little book of stories that quite literally saved the author’s life. “My Last Story” is something that I deeply resonated with when I first heard it and I think that, as a writer it will never quite leave me.
Best stories: The Secret, Jan Godfrey, Spirit, The birds began to sing, The pictures, My Last Story
August 5, 2018
I found this book in the library of a hotel in the Austrian Tyrol, a library discard from U.K., and picked it up to read as am currently enlarging my (small) knowledge of Australasian writing. Beautifully written short stories, and pleased it’s the author’s first book as I like reading works in order! Definitely now want to read more of Janet Frame’s work.
February 2, 2024
Anyone who gives this less than 5 stars is not someone who gets her brilliance! She's unparalleled! GET EVERYTHING SHE WRITES! FRAME IS A LANGUAGE UNTO HERSELF! IF YOU DON'T READ HER, YOU MISS OUT ON WHAT LANGUAGE CAN DO! THE LOVE IS INFINITE!
July 10, 2017
Amazingly simple picture of life as a child and thoughts and later as an inmate of an institution for the mentally unwell.
March 27, 2019
'Jan Godfrey' og 'Frøken Gibson - og pulterkammeret' mine to favoritter i denne samlingen. Lite wow. Mye fin NZ bakgrunn.
October 5, 2020
Loved it so much I almost made it the subject of my PhD. Maybe should have...
June 13, 2021
Reread this in one sitting several years after I first read it. It remains wonderful: evocative without too much heavy-handedness, simply and carefully detailed, and just long enough.
February 28, 2024
[in reference to Spirit] idk i think i'd quite like to live on a leaf for eternity...
December 17, 2024
i feel certain i made these up myself when i was about 10
March 18, 2025
Women and dirty water and Picton shoutout ❤️
May 24, 2025
The best short story writer since Chekhov. Yes, she really was that good.
December 5, 2025
My first impressions: it’s about generational trauma, family history and hidden secrets buried over time, and the way a place can shape and distort our memories. This is probably one of my least favourites from the selection of stories, though I’ll definitely need to give it another read to fully appreciate it.
December 17, 2025
I love these short stories I find myself constantly picking this book up for a quick read
March 11, 2024
The first work that I read by Janet frame was Owls Do Cry. I was at boarding school and a copy had been left on a piano in the prep room. Completely unprepared for Janet's honest and immediate style of writing, I was blown away. Her writing reminds me of Hemingway: simple sentences that convey oceans of meaning.
Picking up these early works now, at the age of 76, I can see a talent still feeling her way.
Picking up these early works now, at the age of 76, I can see a talent still feeling her way.
March 30, 2025
(zeer) korte verhalen met een overwegend trieste sfeer. Mooie taal! 3,5 ster
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews