To the Is-land: An Autobiography

Janet Frame Autobiography #1

by Janet Frame

Book by Frame, Janet

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, Historical, 20th Century

195 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

The 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.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

For many years, up til middle age, being a lifelong reader, I had read the word beribboned without ever having heard it pronounced. In my head it was pronounced "beri-boned" and I never quite knew what it referred to from the text. Then one day I was reading a novel, and the word appeared. However, there was a line break on the page, and the word was be-ribboned. Holy cow! How could I have been so stupid for so long? Months later, I told the story to a friend, and it turned out she had done the same thing for years with the word misled, which she pronounced "mizzled" before learning the difference. We both laughed about it, and even though we only stay in touch on social media these days, mention it occasionally.

All this to explain that this autobiography of Janet Frame's childhood, one of the most celebrated and famous writers from New Zealand was titled "To the Is-land", because as a very young child she read the word island, pronounced it in her head as Is-Land, thought of it as the opposite of was-land, and no matter how many times she was told by teachers and parents and older siblings how to correctly pronounce it, it remained is-land to her forevermore. So it happens to us all, apparently.

This is one of the better childhood autobiographies I have read in a while, of a sensitive, poetic child from a large family, growing up in New Zealand between the wars.

Yes, I informed my old friend of this book and the reason for the title. And we laughed and laughed.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted an imagination that would inhabit a world of fact, descend like a shining light upon the ordinary life of Eden street, and not force me to exist in an 'elsewhere'. I wanted the light to shine upon the pigeons of Glen street, the plum trees in our garden, the two japonica bushes (one red, one yellow), our pine plantations and gully, our summer house, our lives, and our home, the world of Oamaru, the kingdom by the sea. I refused to accept that if I were to fulfil my secret ambition to be a poet, I should spend my imaginative life among the nightingales instead of among the wax-eyes and the fantails. I wanted my life to be the 'other world'.

My favorite word is "arabesques". If I see this word in a story my eyes will stop on the page and follow in my mind's eye patterns in sun spots and spilled oil on concrete. I lose time for I don't know how long. I did this before I was quite certain if that is what the word meant. I like that the word "arabesque" doesn't mean those complex mental paths in images that I can see. It's even more like when I have a thought without words at all and the word can hint at what is there. "Arabesque" reminds me of that feeling. I'm not rustling up words from the English language (something I don't begin to know how to get them to belong to me) to flow with my mind (something I don't begin to know how to get them to belong to someone else). I don't need anything else to weave those pictures.

When I looked up the official definition I discovered that "arabesque" also means a ballet posture to bend the body forward from the hip with one arm extended and the other arm and leg extended backward. In the past I have been sorta "fixated" on wrestling moves to describe some feeling or another. Recently I read a Roland Barthes essay about wrestling. I'm not sure that I agree that wrestling represents the fight of good versus evil. I just liked that the poses could mean breaking out of something. Not the whole play. Symbols rather than a beacon, maybe. I'll have to try out this arabesque pose some day and see if I can see a whole dance from this place. I probably won't so I can keep the idea that maybe I would.

That's what I thought of when thinking about how to describe how I felt about Janet Frame's first autobiography To the Is-land. I remember at first wondering about the strange kind of nostalgia for something you miss when you are living the worst that has ever happened to you. Even if the worst that has ever happened to you is over, missing the halcyon days is an opening to also return to the worst that has ever happened to you. I've never used this word "halcyon" before. Frame uses it often in "Is-land". I know what it means. It doesn't make me miss any days so I don't use it. I get embarrassed in real life speech and constantly switch out my words for other ones when I am asked to repeat myself. Nothing is right so it is silence. I know what other words mean. They are not attached to a breathing memory. To go back means the worst is ahead of you again too. That's how it is in my mind. Is there a word that means to kill nostalgia? I would have lost any way back to childhood if I had been through what Frame went through when she was locked up in an asylum for a decade. I don't really think about that now. She was longing to find the words to make places for herself. Frame had her words that prism-ed what she wanted to see like if anything ever happened outside of me when I retreated inside at the first sight of "arabesque".

To the Is-land is my fourth Janet Frame book. The epileptic brother (helpless in real life, and a resented sucking black hole of unfair normal in fiction. I guess you wouldn't notice him a bit if you felt you belonged) and the older sister who tragically dies young (were they going to be as close as sisters can be as the Myrtle in memory was to her? The fictional sister was leaving in life) were in Owls Do Cry. Janet Frame didn't write down what happened. They are related might have-beens, another way to live through what you had to live through, dark shadows of doubt. I noticed in two of her books, Towards Another Summer (the work that was too personal for Frame to have published herself) and Faces in the Water, a reluctance to touch the secret place. A woman finds her living poem in nature and never returns to it again. Living poem isn't at all what I wanted to say. Damn it. I was happy that Frame did have that bit of unspoiled beauty and allowed herself to be in it, unspoiled by it herself. Her life isn't a sanctuary in her writing. The words must have led to these what-ifs. I have said this times before that I love Janet Frame for willing to see in others what she would want the light to shine on her "elsewhere". It's not hiding. I guess she was afraid of her own might have beens. Owls Do Cry swallowed down like just desserts medicine if Mary Poppins just gave you store bought icky syrup that doesn't go down in the most delicious way.

From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truth and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.

To the Is-land is about the Frame family, in a way. Not really. I loved the story of when they met their mother's mother for the first time. Their soft-heart mother who could never discipline her rowdy brood. She talked up big time how wonderful her own mother was, how they would all be the best of friends. The reality wasn't anything like that. Their grandmother complained about them from the first and they were not the best of friends. I liked that they saw it that their mother wasn't going to be able to pretend about her past anymore. I liked that they appreciated her somewhat more, yet didn't change a thing about taking advantage of her or their rowdiness. The family were very poor. Some periods of their life were looked on with all of the nostalgia from a person who would use "halcyon" a lot could muster. When Janet gets a scholarship to use the library after winning a poetry contest the family get access to books for the first time. I could read about this kind of stuff forever and be happy. (Anyone who spends this much time on goodreads must get some kind of a kick out of vicarious reading, right?) It was sad when the sister who dies, Myrtle, has sex at the age of twelve with the older brother of Janet's best friend (it was only a matter of time considering previous mentions of men getting obsessed with the poor girl). Both girls rat them out without really knowing what they are doing and as a result Janet (she's nicknamed Jean but I can't seem to make myself think of her that way) is forbidden from ever seeing her friend again. I loved the self sacrificing pity she goes about this with. Years later they still adhere to this restriction and whenever their paths cross it is the dramatic play of BEST friends ripped apart. It would have been sad if these two girls weren't the sort to enjoy that sort of thing so very much. It could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Frame writes about herself and her main characters with this wonderful way that I can't describe in the right way. It's something close to tongue in cheek, a way to relish the way down. A way of stepping outside of your own body and prematurely rendering "It's too painful to be funny now!" into a timeless way of the future and the past happening at the same time. It's both funny now and it'll never be funny and I'll never be old enough to laugh about it now. I loved it when a lady on the street gives her two pence (I forget what New Zealand money is. My mind may be erroneously converting it to British money) and she spends it on cough lollipops. They had chloroform in them and she gets really sick. That reminded me of when I was a desperate sugar fiend at the age of four and ate all of my mother's artificial sweetener (I have memories of childhood poverty too. It somehow always seems cozier in stories than it ever was in reality). Little blue packets littered the floor and I was filthy. I felt like a monster when I was discovered (what do they expect when they teach kids to love the Cookie Monster?). Janet Frame is the sort of person to write about herself in this way and not try to make herself look either good or bad. I imagine that the effect she was going for was the timeless laughing/not laughing at the same time. Anyone who has known me for long enough here knows that my standards for memoirs demands this. I'm trusted to be there myself this way. I can't see a reason (a good reason) to write a memoir otherwise.

To the Is-land is "about" Frame's poetic beginnings. I have no idea how she did it. I don't know how she survived what they did to her in those hell holes of New Zealand mental asylums and threats of future swallowing bad memories around the corners of their imprisoning walls. To come out of it with her soul in tact is the secret place for me. The well spring of where the words go to mean anything that is going to feel true. It's a memoir about what was important to her about this in her, the place to go that I don't even have another word for than I like "arabesque". I knew that it was important to her to have that look. I know that her faith in herself was not as open as what she would will for others. I know that she wrote about other places it could go because it wasn't always possible to stretch out past their darkening grasp. This happened before all of that. Young Janet Frame wanted to be a poet. She knew that people would give her awards if she used the word "dream" a lot. A favorite teacher taught her that there was poetry in math. You don't have to go somewhere else. You could find it in your own backyard, as that one girl who liked to dream found out the hard way. Speaking of Dorothy, actually, I think young me first heard of mental institutions and electric shock treatments (Frame was given these over 200 times) when I viewed the 1980s film Return to Oz as a child (it was one of my favorites). Day dreamers don't always do so well. I heard a lot that I should try to be normal. No word still on what that is. Maybe I'd better work on my vocabulary, huh? In prewar New Zealand it wasn't too different than I'd expect now. Be born knowing what everyone wants to hear. Have money. What do people want to hear? I don't know! Help you if you guess wrong, help you if you don't guess something better for yourself. Okay, so I don't know the HOW she had it. She already did. Like Dorothy with home and Dumbo with his feathers it was probably already in her with that wonderful will to look at all the possible shadows. I know that I freaking love Janet Frame. She's my arabesque. Don't know what it means but I can see it. I want the feather too.

Sometimes Frame frustrates me because I know too well the exhaustion of being ones self for too long. If you can't stand yourself it is like feeling that inside of someone else. I envy her poetry and I'm still oh so glad that I am not her. The school jumpers didn't fit. Other girls came from families that didn't have money too. I wish that she had more opportunities in her life to not notice that she didn't fit in (or felt she didn't fit in. There's not much difference if that is your conviction). This must have been the best days of her life because it isn't tiring save for the foreboding feeling you get when you hear someone dismiss someone else that high school was the best four years of their life. No way! But... it's over. For real? Pity, memories of what your own four years were like (not the best). In Owls Do Cry I had the feeling that it would be the best no matter what happened, in spite of what really happened, because the sister was still alive, and in an amputated way. She just misses Myrtle. The anxiety is for the future, when she's gone. I guess I'm back to thinking about how can you remember the past when what comes up is a prison.... It's not nostalgia. Death? I would mumble and say something else if asked to repeat this review. I'm really not feeling too in tune with words and expressions. I'm in my bull shit review phase (wish that'd end already). I mean it that I love Janet Frame. I miss that tip of the tongue feeling I had when I was thinking about how to describe it. I kind of wish that I hadn't tried so arabesque would still mean all kinds of things in my head when connecting Janet Frame novels with Janet Frame autobiographies.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is some of the best writing about childhood and memory that I’ve ever read, infused with music, magic and mystery. The prose alternates between dreamy and matter-of-fact as Frame describes growing up in New Zealand one of five children in the Depression and interwar years. She’s in love with poetry, which softens and gets her through her older sister Myrtle’s death, the awkwardness of adolescence, and the challenge of her brother’s epilepsy, yet she knows that her own efforts are just cringing mimicry; she longs to have a genuine imagination. (The title comes from her mistaken but understandable phonetic pronunciation of the word island when she came across it in a children’s story. Myrtle quickly corrected her about silent letters, but she still liked to think of it as is-land, and used here it’s a reminder of how long-ago memories can exist in a sort of eternal present.)

Favorite passages:

“Each morning we set out foraging for experience and in the afternoon returned to share with one another, while our parents, apart from us now, went about their endless adult work, which might better have been known as ‘toil’ in all its meanings”

“Where in my earlier years time had been horizontal, progressive, day after day, year after year, with memories being a true personal history known by dates and specific years, or vertical, with events stacked one upon the other, … the adolescent time now became a whirlpool, and so the memories do not arrange themselves to be observed and written about, they whirl, propelled by a force beneath, with different memories rising to the surface at different times and thus denying the existence of a ‘pure’ autobiography and confirming, for each moment, a separate story accumulating to a million stories, all different and with some memories forever staying beneath the surface.”

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Folks I felt the need to make an addition to my review. It puzzled me that she should write such a "dry" autobiography - although I've not tackled volumes 2 and 3 - I'm afraid she may continue in the same stiff, methodical style. So I did a bit of digging - Frame died in December 2004 and there is a proficient and sensitive obituary in the Books section, The Guardian -

"...Frame continued to shun publicity, which had the effect of making readers and journalists even more intrusively interested in her life than might otherwise have been. It was in a vain attempt to quell this interest and accompanying speculation, to have 'my say' about the circumstances of her commital to mental hospitals, that led her to write autobiographically in the early 1980s"

To the Is-land was published in 1982 and An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City in 1984. What horrified myself on reading this obituary was the accusations by journalists of her having succeeded in a writing career BECAUSE of her years in a mental institute. When she was in London, she asked for an evaluation of her diagnosis of schizophrenia and was advised that she had never been schizophrenic and

"... indeed, that she was not mentally ill. She returned to New Zealand with a psychiatrist's letter to this effect, which she would occasionally brandish at critics who continued to promote the "mad woman" scenario as an explanation for her art." - Guardian Fri 30 Jan 2004 - Michael King.

And I also have my explanation for what I felt to be a highly documentary style in this volume of her autobiography. I kept thinking it would be so much more interesting to hear more about her family; more about her surroundings - the influence of nature perhaps - but no, so much of this volume is given over to a detailed documentation of every type of literary influence that could have been informative in her education. She was trying to prove her gift.

I had to include this extra to my review - because it seems - so late - if women are talented and gifted it is "because" - how cruel. Surely the years Janet Frame was forced to endure in the mental hospitals in New Zealand with a mis-diagnosis are enough. After the production of Campion's film in 1990 - New Zealand awarded her the Order of New Zealand - a sort of belated apology?

My original review here:
I generally steer clear of autobiographies and unfortunately Frame's To the Is-land, which is book one of three confirms all of my reservations. It's a pity because there were many places where I felt - here we go and then, repeatedly we are brought short with her endless lists of literary works, poems, songs, children's books, fiction and non-fiction to which she had access in her growing years. This volume begins with a history of her parents and grandparents, moves on to her birth, and the other children in the family and proceeds through her earliest formative years all the way through junior and high school to the point at which she qualifies for a position in Dunedin's teaching college and is about to leave her home town of Oamaru.

Apparently these books were very popular, especially in New Zealand - and I suspect that she is something of a national hero. She has an international reputation with many awards to her name and is CBE, ONZ.

A long time ago I watched Jane Campion's award winning film "An Angel at My Table" 1990, which is based on the three volume autobiography - the focus of the film of course deals with the dramatic incidents of her teacher training years when she attempted suicide and was incarcerated in a mental institute with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. None of this is in the volume I read.

I do like her fiction - I've read The Owl Calls My Name - her first novel and Living in the Maniototo - I think I've also read her short story collection - The Lagoon and Other Stories, which was the publication that saved her from undergoing a leucotomy.

I will definitely read more of her fiction, and poetry - but will skip the next two volumes in the autobiography. It is so clear, to me at least, that a work of biography is controlled by the need for documentation - facts, data, lists, references to documented externals - it provides little room for the elements of fantasy and imagination - which is what Frame was most interested in.

[JimZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this first-of-three memoirs. It started out so good....and then ½ way through it just sputtered into Borings-ville. She kept on interspersing her text with poems, either from her, her siblings, her mother, or from poets of yore.... I was more interested in her and her parents and her siblings and assorted friends and relatives —the first half of the book — much more than the poetry.

I laughed out loud when I read what’s below — it’s just the way she tells a notable event in a deadpan way. When she was walking to school one day a woman outside of her house called her over and gave her two shillings:
• I didn’t go to school that day. Instead, I returned to Mrs. Feather’s store, where I bought a shilling’s worth of acid drops and a shilling’s worth of chlorodyne lollies (a cough lolly containing chloroform, although I did not know this) and walked around the streets, eating my lollies, until it was after school-time, when I came home and fell asleep for eighteen hours, and when I woke I was violently sick. ‘What happened?’ Mum asked. ‘A lady gave me two shillings,’ I said.

Anyhoo, there are two more parts to the memoir: ‘An Angel at My Table’ (winner of the Non-Fiction Prize, New Zealand Book Awards, 1984) and ‘The Envoy from Mirror City’ (winner of the New Zealand ‘Wattie’ Book of the Year Award, 1985).
Review:
• https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
• A journal article on the book: https://www.academia.edu/43968426/Imp...

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know what appealed to me most about this first volume of Janet Frame’s autobiography - the wonderfully perceptive way she writes about her early life (up until she left school for teacher training college), the familiarity of so many signposts in her life that I recognized 20-30 years later, or identifying with her crushing sense of isolation, timidity and need for approval.

Many childhood bios that I’ve read have seemed disconnected, irrelevant even, to the lives of the adults they grew up to be, but Frame’s is an essential part of her life and writing. And it is really interesting and engaging to read. “Luminous” sounds pretentious, I know, but that’s the sense I have of her style.

She says that from the first she believed that words meant what they said, and her awareness of their power came early (she was 4 I think):

The visit to the dentist marked the end of my infancy and my introduction to the threatening world of contradiction where spoken and written words assume a special power.
I was taken to the dentist where I kicked and struggled, thinking that something dire was about to happen to me, while the dentist beckoned to the nurse who came forward holding a pretty pink towel. “Smell the pretty pink towel” she said gently, and unsuspecting, I leaned forward to smell, realizing too late as I fell asleep that I’d been deceived. I have never forgotten that deception and my amazed disbelief that I could have been so betrayed, that the words “Smell the pretty pink towel” had been used to lure me into a kind of trap. How could that have been? How could a few kind words mean so much harm?

Most of her childhood was spent in Oamaru where grew up in poverty, though not as abjectly poor as some families (she says she didn’t even realize this until her last year of school). Her parents struggled to provide her with the bare minimum she needed for school and were very proud of her academic and writing achievements. But this isn’t the story of a budding writer growing up in a poor but happy family: her father was a bit of a bully (hardly uncommon back in the 20’s and 30’s though), her mother was soft-hearted but ground down and a frustrated poet too, and there were several terrible family tragedies.

She was entranced by poetry and writing her own verse with confidence, and at 11 when her older sister Myrtle died she sensed that the poets she read spoke to her directly about her death. Her confidence seemed to evaporate with her teens though, and she has a wry way of looking back on that time:

I was overcome with envy and longing. Shirley had everything a poet needed plus the tragedy of a dead father. How could I ever be a poet when I was practical, never absentminded, I liked mathematics, and my parents were alive?

By 13 she describes her longing to belong and crippling shyness (which I thought wasn’t at all obvious in her earlier years) as all-encompassing, yet there is nothing plaintive in her account; it is simply clear-headed, self-deprecating and funny in places too: I ached for her unhappiness but I loved what she wrote.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of my self-declared New Zealand November in 2015.

In this first volume of her autobiography, Janet Frame writes about her childhood up until college, with several moves (her father worked for the railroad), a brother with epilepsy, and friends from the wrong side of the tracks.

My favorite bit was an entire chapter about her public library, which she gained access to after winning a poetry contest. (It cost money to check books out at the Athenaeum, something which her family couldn't have afforded.) This tiny literary triumph transformed the reading lives of everyone in her family, and expanded her imagination, setting the path for the writer she would become. This area of her life would continue to be a focus throughout her childhood school years.

"I have often wondered in which world I might have lived my 'real' life had not the world of literature been given to me by my mother and by the school syllabus."

There are also some hints of the struggles with mental illness she would encounter.

"I did not think of myself as original: I merely said what I thought... I came to accept the difference, although in our world of school, to be different was to be peculiar, a little 'mad.'"

More illuminating are her discoveries of imagination and creativity, and how they collided with other people's perceptions. Even in her piano playing, she wanted to hide, wanted to keep it for herself.

I had read another autobiography from a poet in New Zealand born in the exact same year as Janet Frame. It was interesting to see the areas of convergence and difference between the two childhoods. Janet seemed to experience far more displacement, hardship, and loss (including the death of her older sister!). This volume details the life events, yes, but also the books read, ideas thought, words written. It is more of an internal view.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janet Frame, one of New Zealand's best-known writers, remembers her early years in dreamy, thought-swimming sentences, chock-full of poetic, strung-together adjectives. Her family is made up of her father who "was inclined to dourness with a strong sense of formal behavior that did not allow him the luxury of reminiscence"; her mother whose "titties were always there, like the cow's teats for an occasional squirt into our mouths"; Bruddie, her brother who (poor thing) developed epilepsy and had to endure his whole life being told by his father that the only cure he needed for these convulsions was to "stop it if he wanted to"; Myrtle, Janet's older sister, who once learning what married couples do, demonstrated the new found knowledge with a neighborhood boy to Janet and her friend (who promptly shared the experience with her mother and father); Dot and Chicks, her two younger sisters, who we don't learn a whole lot about; and various cats and dogs that roam though her life.

This is the first of a three book set of her autobiography and she takes us from her first memories to her entrance into the future "which had been talked of and dreamed of for so long". This is the story of her journey to becoming a writer.

[Sophy H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautifully eloquent description of someone who has clearly felt "not at home in their own skin" during their childhood and teenage years.
Due to Janet Frame's honest and raw style of writing, I felt totally able to relate to those years growing up, when you feel not quite left one place, but not quite arrived at another, in a permanent awkward emotional and physical limbo.

Some favourite passages from the book:-

"I had my first conscious feeling of an outside sadness, or it seemed to come from outside, from the sound of the wind moaning in the wires..... I felt a burden of sadness and loneliness as if something had happened or begun and I knew about it. I don't think I had yet thought of myself as a person looking out at the world; until then, I felt I was the world. In listening to the wind and its sad song, I knew I was listening to a sadness that had no relation to me, which belonged to the world".

"I realized that I was a dreamer simply because everywhere reality appeared to be so sordid and wasteful, exposing dreams year by year to relentless decay".

"In an adolescent homelessness of self, in a time where I did not quite know my direction, I entered eagerly a nest of difference which others found for me but which I lined with my own furnishing..."

Powerful stuff. A beautifully simple but haunting read.

[Caroline Barron · Rating 5 out of 5]

On this perfect little New Zealand is-land (sic) - Waiheke - I met Janet Frame for the first time. Reading Frame is like coming home - walking through paddocks in bare feet, over the stile and to the house where Dad is doing the crossword in front of the range. I'm not sure how I have got this far through life, as a literature-loving New Zealander, without stumbling into her at the library, in class, or by being introduced by friends.

A quick look on Wikipedia reminded me of her poetically tragic life; the most distressing part of which is in 1951 she narrowly escaped being lobotomized because she was awarded a prestigious NZ literary prize for her short story collection. Bloody hell! That's only 60-odd years ago. How narrowly her creative mind avoided disrepair, how close we came to stripping her of her poetic gift.


Words shaped Frame's world. This volume tracks the building blocks of her literary world from childhood to university preparation. We get to know Frame through her love of quirky words (rattan, decide, destination, adventure, permanent wave, O.K., skirting board, wainscot) her precious library subscription, her registering of '"poetic" words' such as dream, misty, stars lost (203) in shaping modernist poetry. Along side this we witness the cruel, tough life of a low-income family in the first half of the twentieth century in New Zealand, and how resourceful one needed to be to survive (her mother is a beautiful character).

I raced through this book and am desperate to read the next volume ('An Angel at My Table' - also a film directed by Jane Campion). Do you think I could find a copy anywhere on this Is-land (sic)?

Holler if you've got one!

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I wanted an imagination that would inhabit a world of fact, descend like a shining light upon the ordinary life of Eden Street." Her book stands up to this hope. It's a concrete, tangible life story lit up by her humor, intelligence, and compassion.

[Lynda Spadaccini · Rating 4 out of 5]

have read it before and am reading it again. The amazing Ms Frame captures her depressive, difficult childhood with ease . The isolation both geographically and internally is beautifully explored, with perfectly placed observations on how a young Ms Frame dealt with the world sround her.

Finished now, such an inspiring woman, so quirky and honest. I have a crush on her ... again.

[Bas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wat dit boek zo fijn maakt en benieuwd naar het tweede en derde deel? Moeilijk aanwijsbaar. Een bepaalde naïviteit gekoppeld aan een heel helder beschrijvend vermogen. Groot schrijverschap uit zich in de details.

[Glen U · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janet Frame is a phenomenal writer and I wonder why she is not more acclaimed in the literary world. "To the Is-Land" is the first in a series that contains three volumes that comprises Frame's autobiography. It encompasses the the beginning of the author's life, from birth through adolescence. It is a sincere and compelling story of the childhood Frame, written in a plainer style than that of her fiction, yet still lyrical in nature and, at times, pure poetry. Frame has the ability to create a sense of wonder, unique to children, and convey that pure feeling to the reader through her words. But by no means is this a fairy tale type of childhood, in fact at times, filled with poverty, hunger, and death, but yet the young Janet Frame evolved into a writer of supreme talent. Her growth as a writer is documented in this book as the reader sees how her tribulations and her acceptance of these same tribulations, formed her literary prowess, as a young girl. Those same traumas and their subsequent consequences, can be seen in her fiction and even in some her own personal problems, as an adult. An excellent read. As an aside, one of my favorite things from this book is that the Public Library in the author's town, has the grand name of The Oamaru Anthenaeum and Mechanic's Institute. Love it!

[Tomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the movie adaptation of Janet Frame's autobiography, primarily because of its sensory representation of childhood memory in the early section, and so I was very pleased to find that the source material contains many of the same pleasures. Janet Frame has a really special connection with her young self, and she is really able to connect with the experiences of growing up, remembering them in a relatable and tactile way. I really enjoyed the associations she would make, as a child would, between songs or poems and her own living experiences; she also has a way of capturing the most precious feelings of childhood purity, as with her memory of the lamb that looked at her sweetly, and how that feeling was taken away by the laughter of her family who could not understand. It's a very beautiful memoir, with a very worthwhile perspective, that accesses unique and powerful feelings I have not often heard expressed. On the downside, I found that the disconnectedness of the stories also makes it hard at times to really engage. I appreciated it and found it frequently lovely but never gripping.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I hated it. Then I realized it was genius. Good god, what an idiot I used to be!

[Dara Salley · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I couldn’t remember why I added this book to my “to-read” list. Then I remember that it was because I saw the amazing movie “An Angel at My Table”. The movie shows the life of Janet Frame and dramatizes various parts of her three autobiographical novels. I found her story very compelling. She was a woman who grew up in poverty in New Zealand. She finds an outlet for her imagination by writing poetry and eventually becomes a world-acclaimed poet. First she has to overcome many obstacles including rotting teeth and long-term imprisonment in the worst kind of mental asylum the 60’s had to offer.

All that comes in her second novel, ‘The Angel at My Table’. That book is the most popular one in the trilogy. ‘To the Is-Land’ is the first book and it covers her life from birth until graduation from high school. She writes about her childhood experiences and impressions with great vividness. Her account reminded me a bit of ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ by James Joyce. Both writers employ a disjointed, dreamlike prose to describe the feeling of childhood.

I enjoyed learning about the inspirations and events that led to her becoming a poet. I have never been able to appreciate poetry. A year ago I read “Understanding Poetry”, a textbook aimed at introducing novices to poetry. Even though I read it cover-to-cover and enjoyed it, I still have not been able to enjoy reading poetry. Frame discusses her nascent love of poetry and the combination of influences that set her on the path to becoming a renowned poet. It’s obvious that she had natural talent. She lists with pride all the poetry and literature competitions she won as a child.

But more importantly, she talks about the songs, poems and rhymes that captured her imagination. Certain phrases would stick in her mind and play over repetitively. These phrases helped her relate to the world around her. Certain poetic phrases would evoke a person, a time of year or an event. She begins to create her own phrases to describe her life. Frame is very frank about the quality of her early childhood poems. She mocks her reliance on standard poetic words and phrases. It is fascinating to read her account of her awkward transformation from childish poet into an artist. Frame lived an extraordinary life and possessed the skill to record her life vividly. I can’t wait to read the second volume of her autobiography.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has a pretty slow start, but this first volume of Janet Frame's autobiography improves as it goes along... until you find that you've finished it without actually stopping for dinner. There's a sort of gentle mesmerising effect that's heightened by the familiarity of the natural world - to New Zealand readers at least. And I might have experienced Otago and Southland some generations on from Frame, but it's still very recognisable even over distance. In fact, the point where I felt closest to her was in Frame's schoolgirl insistence that what she wanted to write about were the subjects of her home - the little native wax eyes instead of those flashy foreign nightingales, for instance.

Place should have an influence on writing, and Frame's realisation of her place, and how it affected what she wanted to write, is the central theme of this book I think. It was certainly, for me, the most interesting.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know that this memoir--of Janet Frame's childhood in the South Island of New Zealand in the '30s and '40s--is perfectly good in its own right, yet the main thing it inspired in me was the desire to reread Owls Do Cry. The novel covers very similar events, and seems to do so with deeper emotional resonance and more indelible imagery than Frame conveys in writing about her real, un-fictionalized memories.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aggghh. Janet Frame is truly a national treasure and I'm only just beginning to comprehend it.

This memoir is so, so great. The author's experience of art, literature, time, and her articulation of artistic, individual and national identity is ... hauntingly personal and exquisite. Also, I don't think many (if any) books are capable of making me want to re-engage with regional NZ / Southland lol. But this has!!!!

[Pip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this autobiography. Janet Frame takes us from the innocence of childhood into a self conscious adolescence. A great portrayal of family and sisterhood. The family struggles with poverty and makes the most out of small things and events. Janet is transported by literature and brings a romantic interpretation to her landscape.

[april violet]

I made it halfway through this book before I returned it to the library. I suppose I'm not in the right frame (pardon the pun) of mind for it. Janet Frame's prose is a bit plain here compared to that in her fiction.

[Edward Sargisson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite good. Better than most autobiographies. She is a writer after all.

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it first came out and was captivated - then had to wait impatiently for the next volume
I have the 3 in the set and it's time to read them again!

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a speech exam quite a while ago, but I did actually enjoy it much more than I expected.

[Cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that Frame's autobiographical writing is poetic and interesting. She doesn't embellish; and yet she paints a vivid picture of her childhood that transports you there.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read: November 9, 2017, Thursday

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminded me of Alice Munro.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Janet Frame. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but the way she writes is so engaging. I find it so easy to be part of her world, and so interested in things I wouldn’t find interesting if anyone else had told me about l them. The way she captures the innocence and obstinacy of children, and how children view “adult issues” like poverty, war, sex, race… it’s fascinating.

I’m looking forward to the next two parts of this autobiography, though know some of what they entail, and can’t bear to see this sweet, clever, shy girl harmed.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janet Frame is one of those writers whose work I feel like I should appreciate more than I actually do. I love Jane Campion's biopic about Frame ("An Angel at My Table"), and I spent part of my own childhood in Frame's native New Zealand, and yet somehow this first volume of her autobiography just doesn't connect with me. It's certainly a sympathetic story of a literature-loving schoolgirl working to transcend a modest family background, and Frame herself is a charmingly awkward character, and yet in the end it's just a bit too dull for my taste.