La città degli specchi

Janet Frame Autobiography #3

by Janet Frame

Terzo capitolo dall'autobiografia di Janet Frame. Il libro è un'evocazione geniale e commovente del processo attraverso il quale una donna insicura, ma allo stesso modo determinata, si trasforma in una scrittrice e in un'artista nell'Europa degli anni '50.

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

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

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

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried when I finished this because it was like losing a friend. I actually felt destitute. I know I rely on books as companions but I was surprised how close Janet Frame is to certain ideas and beliefs that I also uphold, especially in relation to the art of writing.

My acquaintance with her goes back many years, I would guess that I took her books seriously after seeing the film "An Angel at My Table", but I'm also sure that "Owls Do Cry" was a book that hung around in our family home. I think also that she was one of those authors I found difficult to understand when I first encountered her 20, 30 or more years ago, and as a result I started several books, but did not finish them: Volume 1 of the autobiography "To the Is-Land" is familiar as is "Towards Another Summer" and "You are Now Entering the Human Heart". Even now I struggle with some of her ideas, the extended metaphors, her tendency to flip the meaning of words etc.

One aspect of the 3 volumes that I particularly enjoyed, however, was all the inside information on the writing process. Friends, if you have any writerly aspirations - this is the book to read, along with volumes 1 and 2. Here for example Frame writes about her concept "Mirror City" which I think is a description of the abstract, yet real place where memory, imagination, lived experience, feelings are held, and from which the "Envoy", the traveller perhaps or explorer of herself is able to extract, and convert the 'data' into words and sentences.

Now that writing was my only occupation, regardless of the critical and financial outcome, I felt I had found my 'place' at deeper level than any landscape of any country would provide. In New Zealand Frank Sargeson had saved my life by affirming that I could spend my time writing, although to him, I think, I was always the 'mad, sane' person; here in London writing had been affirmed as a way of life without psychiatric qualifications. I now felt, inhabiting my 'place', that day by day I could visit the Mirror City and ponder questions that only those trying to practise a form of art have time for: artists, monks, idlers, any who stand and stare. I could journey like a seasoned traveller to the Mirror City, observing (not always consciously), listening, remembering and forgetting. The only graveyard in Mirror City is the graveyard of memories that are resurrected, reclothed with reflection and change, their essence untouched. (A truthful autobiography tries to record the essence. The renewal and change are part of the material of fiction.)

I felt that, as I was reading, especially this third part, that she had tried to go back exactly to her memories of this period in her life, without altering or changing anything. This is difficult. Volume 3 covers the years when she arrived in London, just one day before her 32nd birthday to approximately 7 years later when she returned to New Zealand, 1964. The autobiography was written some 20 years later, first published in 1984; this edition by the publisher George Braziller, is an American company and has a date of 1985.

Sometimes it is hard to convey just how good the quality of an author's writing is. As I do, I look around on Goodreads for the next fascinating read, I check reviews, I spin through my Kindle, I decide to sample "Station Eleven" - a new book by Emily St. John Mandel. 10 pages later - exhaustion! Jeevan - unbelievable - no one like that exists.

Here is Frame's depiction of the helpful Patrick Reilly, that she eventually has to remove from her life.

Feeling insulted on behalf of those referred to as 'black', I said carefully, 'You mean the people from the West Indies and Africa?'
'Yes, the blacks.'
'I don't think people should be referred to by the colour of their skin,' I said anxiously.
'They're lower than us. They're the blacks,' he said almost viciously.
I let the new unpleasantness wash over me. He was ignorant, I decided. He didn't know and he didn't understand. Also, he was afraid. ...
I was grateful to Patrick Reilly. He was a natural helper. He was also dependable, self-satisfied, bigoted, lonely, religious with an endearing Irish accent. In spite of his largely disqualifying prejudice he was what my mother would have called a 'gentleman'. He was my first friend in London.

Wouldn't you say that is more interesting than Jeevan walking down Yonge street, literally catching a man having a heart attack and consoling a small eight year old and wondering where his girlfriend Laura is etc. Isn't it more interesting to read about people who like Janet Frame struggle to resolve the difference between their beliefs and their actual day to day needs?

But Frame is also so funny, there is a lot of dead-pan humour, easy to miss sometimes, and also her wonderful resilience in so many daunting situations. She leaves Ibiza because it is spoilt by her first love-affair with an American, whom she realizes she does not love, but then finds she is pregnant; or in Andorra, she lives with a poor family, who will her to resolve her single status by marrying somebody totally unsuitable. Each situation is written with such honesty - the dramatic ones and the small ones. Everything is interesting - everything appeals - there is absolute magic in how she conveys the internal thoughts about everything she experiences. It is one of those books where you think 'ah yes,' I recognize that. Here is a funny passage, where she is trying to escape the noise of London; she has accepted the tenancy and upkeep of a small cottage in East Suffolk.

Certainly the terms of my tenancy were that I should take care for the house, the dog, the garden, but I did not expect that on Saturday afternoon Will and Coll would set up their deckchairs in the sun while they suggested (ordered would be a more suitable word: they had met in the army) that I climb the ladder and remove all the dead lilac blossoms from the ninety-foot lilac hedge, working my way along each side. Otherwise, they said, the lilac wouldn't last, it would vanish in a few weeks, and what would they do, knowing they had wasted the precious lilac? My next task was to prune the rose bushes, and to weed the garden borders ('you must keep the garden free of weeds') and while I toiled most of the afternoon, snipping, pulling, tearing; redfaced, breathless and hot, I watched them lounging in their deckchairs as if they were passengers on a cruise ship observing the fascinating work of the crew.

Frame's 7 years abroad are more or less an account of how she tries to write and eke out the travelling grant she received from New Zealand (300 pounds). She supplements this money by working at various low paid jobs and has to move on multiple occasions through the plethora of poor quality housing in London. Possibly the most important outcome of her stay in London, is her visit to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital where she stays for 6 weeks for a series of tests and diagnostic interviews and at the end is pronounced as never being mentally ill. However, the removal of her "prop" of schizophrenia causes severe anxiety and when another job and bedsit become too depressing to manage she requests a stay in the hospital. She spends 6 months in hospital and is treated with extraordinary care and compassion by a team of NHS doctors. After her discharge she maintains a regular meeting with a Dr Cawley who helps her in many practical ways.

I can not state adequately how wonderful this book is and indeed the set of 3 that make up Frame's autobiography. She has certainly changed my somewhat negative view of this genre of writing and I can only say as a parting remark: if you miss this, you have missed something truly amazing.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was leery when I wrote my review of the second-of-three memoirs, ‘An Angel at My Table’, that the third and final memoir could be as good as that one. And I was right....to be leery. I do not feel ‘The Envoy from Mirror City’ was nearly as good as ‘An Angel at My Table’. 2.5 stars in my inflated opinion. 🤨 😐

This was just a normal run-of-the-mill memoir. A person with a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia who despite that manages to publish two of her works (which was part of the story in the second memoir) continues to publish after she moves to Spain and then England over the next 7 years or so, and gets the label of schizophrenia removed from her persona (the gist of the third memoir). I was happy for her, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t find her experiences in Europe all that interesting, truth be told. 😐 😑

I cannot understand why Michael Holroyd who is a well-respected biographer called this ‘one of the greatest autobiographies written this century’. That is what it says on the front cover of the edition i have, titled ‘An Autobiography’ (The Women’s Press, 1990), which contains all three memoirs: ‘One of the great autobiographies written in the 20th century’. But I wonder if that statement should be attributed to the collection of the three memoirs or just the second of the three memoirs, ‘An Angel at My Table’, because when I googled ‘Michael Holroyd review of Janet Frame’, a picture of the second memoir ‘An Angel at My Table’ popped up with the following quote from Holroyd:
• One of the great autobiographies written in the 20th century ... A journey from luminous childhood, through the dark experiences of supposed madness, to the renewal of her life through writing ... a heroic story, and told with such engaging tone, humorous perspective and imaginative power
• Michael Holroyd, Sunday Times
I guess I’ll never know. 😕 🙁

Reviews
• https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/06/bo...

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume lacks the emotional tug of the first two, but that’s not a bad thing; I appreciated its quieter and more reflective tone as Janet Frame describes her years overseas and a growing confidence in herself.

After arriving in London, she made plans to head to Ibiza, mainly because she was still following advice given to her in NZ on how to live cheaply. But in fact it suited her perfectly, and she had her first love affair there. There is a lightness that was absent from the previous volumes, and which I thought was nicely captured when she discovered she’d checked her luggage at the left luggage counter and not on the train to Barcelona

A sweeping cloud of tears threatened but did not fall. I gulped. Then, in spite of growing apprehension and a feeling of lonely misery, I was overtaken by the delight of being free of luggage. I watched the other passengers struggling to climb into the high Spanish train and my sense of freedom increased. Lighthearted now, I could have flown on my own wings to Barcelona and Ibiza.

Back in London, (Ibiza had turned sour after the end of the affair, then – again following another crumb of advice – she spent a month or two in Andorra, of all places) she had two objectives: to write of course, but also, to understand whether she really did have schizophrenia.

She had a referral to the Maudsley Hospital, where she was treated with kindness and understanding; the diagnosis was that

I had never suffered from schizophrenia. I should never have been admitted to a mental hospital. Any problems I now experienced were mostly a direct result of my stay in hospital.
I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I said shyly, formally, as if I had won a prize.

But:

At first, the truth seemed to be more terrifying than the lie. Schizophrenia, as a psychosis, had been an accomplishment, removing ordinary responsibility from the sufferer. I was bereaved. I was ashamed. How could I ask for help directly when there was ‘nothing wrong with me’?

In fact it took months more treatment and ongoing therapy to undo the horror of her NZ experience, and start living as she wanted to rather than how she thought she should. Her psychiatrist suggested it would be helpful to write about that time: the book that became Faces in the Water. (I still find it a miracle that the NHS in the ‘50s had the resources to provide the level of sympathetic support that she described. I wonder how anyone like her would fare now.)

There is much more here – Frame writes with such elegance and economy that months or years pass in the space of a few paragraphs, yet it doesn’t seem as if she left anything out. After seven years away, she returned to NZ when she learnt that her father had died. She was unprepared though for her status as a celebrated author “with an overseas reputation” - it’s funny to be reminded how much of an obsession that was in the 1960’s.

She ends her story shortly after that, saying that her more recent past is still raw material that her imagination - her Envoy from Mirror City - needs time to process ... I’m paraphrasing a bit there because to be honest, I do find her metaphors and imagery a bit obscure sometimes. But still, this is a lovely and uplifting book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) This is the last and least enjoyable volume of Frame’s autobiography, but as a whole the trilogy is an impressive achievement. Never dwelling on unnecessary details, she conveys the essence of what it is to be (Book 1, To the Is-land) a child, (Book 2, An Angel at My Table) a ‘mad’ person, and 3) a writer. After years in mental hospitals for presumed schizophrenia, Frame was awarded a travel fellowship. In between stays in London (and Suffolk), she lived in Ibiza and Andorra. Her seven years away from New Zealand were a prolific period as, with the exception of breaks to go to films and galleries, and one obsessive relationship that nearly led to pregnancy out of wedlock, she did little else besides write. It was a time of choosing her own life instead of letting others determine it for her or prescribe what she as a woman must want, and of moving past the autofiction of Faces in the Water. The title is her term for the imagination, which leads us to see Plato’s ideals of what might be.

Some notable lines:

“I could not people, everlastingly, my novels with characters suffering from the ‘Ophelia syndrome’ with details drawn from my observations in hospital. I knew that the Ophelia syndrome is a poetic fiction that nevertheless usefully allows a writer to explore varieties of otherwise unspoken or unacceptable feelings, thoughts, and language.”

“I know also that there are no ‘most women’ and not to be one, through disinclination or disability even is not to be a personal failure: the failure lies in the expectations of others.”

“My only qualification for continuing this autobiography is that although I have used, invented, mixed, remodelled, changed, added, subtracted from all experiences I have never written directly of my own life and feelings. Undoubtedly I have mixed myself with other characters who themselves are a product of known and unknown, real and imagined; I have created ‘selves’; but I have never written of ‘me’.”

“I know, finally, that leaving one’s native land forever can be a strength or a weakness or both, depending on the artist, to be used to add to the store of material processed in Mirror City, and that for the writer of fiction being an exile may be a hindrance”

“all those years in London and I need to ask someone to say goodbye to me!” [the librarian who got her a ticket to the BL Reading Room]

“In writing this autobiography I have been returning to each year of my life to collect the treasures of my experience, and I have set them down in their own home, their own place.”

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as the third volume of Janet Frame's autobiography during my self-declared New Zealand November.

This volume talks about Janet as an author, moving in writers' and artists' circles, and her seven-year trip abroad (funded by a grant!). While in Oxford she is told she is not in fact schizophrenic, and any negative disconnected experiences she has now are most likely a direct result of electric shock therapy treatments she had while living in mental institutions. This causes a bit of an identity shock but she seems to come through it strong and self-aware.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much beauty and insight in this final chapter of JF's autobio. Once again I found myself constantly in awe of how boldy, bravely and eloquently she has mapped out out the internal and external narratives which informed her experience - this time abroad.

I feel strongly that the transformation of Frame's personal story into an artefact for public consumption is something vital and precious to NZ's literary and cultural identity / the canon / whatever.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read any Janet Frame yet you Must! Hers is the first autobiography I ever loved, she is the most effortlessly beautiful writer, and her life history is so dramatic: her lobotomy was cancelled just days before when she won a literary prize for her first book, and the doctor read about it in a newspaper.. Jane Campion adapted these autobiographies into An Angel at My Table (1990) which I would also recommend -- am writing something on it at the moment!

[Eric Hinkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dr Aubrey gave the verdict. I had never suffered from schizophrenia, he said. I should never have been admitted to a mental hospital. Any problems I now experienced were mostly a direct result of my stay in hospital.
I smiled. 'Thank you,' I said shyly, formally, as if I had won a prize."

Imagine, after spending 8 years in and out of barbaric mental hospitals in the first half of the 20th century, being told that it was all a farce, an injustice, a mistake. How do you move on from that? Those years of cruelty and falsehood left an indelible mark on Janet Frame (not to mention the shock treatment and close encounter with a lobotomy). The sadness of her casual reference to her "lost 20s," a time when most people live life to the fullest; the confusion regarding pretentious doctors not even taking the time to talk to her, and nurses treating her like a sewer rat; the look of fear on people's faces outside of the hospital when confronted with a "mental patient"... It's a wonder that Frame even survived, let alone thrived, embarking on a glorious literary career which was started while in confinement.

This final volume of her autobiography, following the classic An Angel at My Table, is in some ways even more of a page-turner. It's fascinating to read about her timid first steps at starting a new life, or, rather, finally starting life at age 31 after years robbed from her by menacing "caretakers." It's an experience of sharp poignancy to share her humble feelings of success, in tandem with her anxiety and insecurity, heartening only because we know that she eventually overcame any feelings of inferiority or inadequacy, as a writer and as a human being.

As someone who also relishes living abroad and trying to find oneself and one's talent, I loved reading her descriptions of living in various villages and cities in Europe. She paints full pictures of all those who were a part of her life at those times, and you can really feel where she was living and how she responded to her environment. This is not a surprise, having read perhaps ten of her books and knowing her skill at bringing life to everything in her mind, but I hadn't read much about her years spent in these foreign places. Lovely.

All in all, one of the best books I've read from Janet Frame. The 2nd and 3rd volumes of this autobiography are exemplary models of the form, and top tier reading for fans of NZ literature, or any literature.

Some of my favorite bits:

"I know that at my age then, in my early thirties, most women would have the help of a mate, husband, companion. I know also that there are no 'most women' and not to be one, through disinclination or disability even is not to be a personal failure: the failure lies in the expectations of others."

"I knew I was ignorant, colonial born and taught, yet passionately intent on learning about the rest of the world, 'them', the people who had until now been only statistics, stereotypes showered with equal concentrations of curiosity, fear, prejudice, mixed with the main brew of 'love your neighbor', 'we must love one another or die...'"

"I was not aware of the noise and traffic of Barcelona but of this background of overflowing quiet that enveloped me with a feeling of being at home, in place at last, like a piece of human furniture that has been shifted and reshifted and rearranged, never before exactly right, in all corners of the world."

"I rejoiced that I was alone on a Mediterranean island, speaking no English, with my Spanish welcomed as my English had never been, for my struggle to express my thoughts was attended by the kindness of those who were proud that I was trying to speak their language and who were eager to explain, suggest, help, and teach, whereas in speaking one's own language to others who also speak it one is alone, struggling to meet the expectations of the listener."

[Bas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fijn om te lezen, jammer dat het nu uit is! Ik zal verder moeten met Gezichten in het water, de roman die Janet Frame schreef geïnspireerd op haar gedwongen verblijf in een psychiatrische inrichting. Een episode die in deze driedelige autobiografie eigenlijk centraal staat, maar in de vertelling overgeslagen wordt.

[Glen U · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Envoy from Mirror City" is the third part of Janet Frame's autobiography. The first two installments of this autobiography covered Frame's life from childhood, where we see her as a child beset by poverty and personal family tragedy. The second part covered her, again tragic, adolescence and early adulthood. It also included her frequent stays in New Zealand's mental asylums where much of Frame's fiction was conceived from her personal experiences. This third volume follows Frame to Europe to enhance and enlighten her life experiences so she can become a "real" (her words, not mine) writer and her subsequent commercial success and return to New Zealand. Personally, I liked least "The Envoy from Mirror City". Frame is an amazing writer, wringing from the written word, emotions and feelings in the reader that few have achieved. Her journeys through her "madness" are especially wrenching and are the basis for her unique fictional style. This third installment of her life seems written more conventionally and she loses the emotional bonding that her words bring forth in her writing. Her many allusions to the "Mirror City" also seems a bit contrived although it is a fascinating look into her thought processes and how she can bring out the amazingly feeling fiction she produces. Taken as a whole, the autobiography series is an amazing and compelling look at an amazing and compelling author. No one else I have read can take me into depths, that I hope I never have to experience, through their fiction, like Janet Frame.
"Therein lies madness"- from "King Lear"

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una certa casualità nella scelta delle letture a volte fa fare strani incontri, ed questo il caso di La città degli specchi, che ritenevo un'opera di fantasia e invece è un'autobiografia, e non solo, è il terzo volume dell'autobiografia di Janet Frame.
Fortunatamente la prosa è tale, nonostante la traduzione poco degna, da non rendere necessaria la conoscenza dei due volumi precendenti, e la storia di questa timida scrittrice neozelandese a lungo creduta pazza, come spesso avviene alle donne geniali, dalla Nuova Zelanda all'Inghilterra e ritorno, attraverso la presa di coscienza della propria personalità, del proprio corpo, della propria sanità mentale e, soprattutto del proprio talento, è decisamente avvincente.

[Matt Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful, gentle, unassuming book from someone happy to let her life speak plainly for itself, having faith that the events and reflections themselves are interesting enough.

Which they are, as in this volume the shy New Zealand novelist makes her way to Spain and Andorra, and the UK, in search of experience, in search of herself minus the trappings of life and expectation in NZ.

I enjoyed the parts in Spain where she lived so simply, where blankets and butter are luxuries, and the company of a westerner is enjoyed but frowned upon.

I will have to go back and read the first two volumes at some stage.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concluding volume to Frame's autobiographical trilogy, and it's just as good as the others. This is the one where she escapes provincial New Zealand and heads to Europe, where she gets a literary agent, has some affairs, and finally gets the "you're not crazy you've just had crappy doctors" diagnosis. When I think of all the time this poor woman wasted in mental hospitals with incompetent care I am truly disturbed. How many other people suffered unnecessarily as she did?

I did find, to be honest, the ongoing metaphor of the Mirror City a little belaboured, but I was so glad to see her get a life for a bit that it didn't bother me that much.

[Chris Waterford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story of the author's seven years in Europe, trying out friendships and relationships for the first time at 31, while writing her first novels. The writing is superb and the relationship dramas boldly honest and compelling.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful, precarious, hard fought struggle to be herself and to write.

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it was first published - remember waiting impatiently for it, and I wasn't disappointed.
I have the 3 in the set and it's time to read them again!

[Rebecka WLLPWR · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life. Marvellous.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. It was wonderful to finish this third part and be left with a feeling of relief, and hope! While not as “heavy” as the last two, I really enjoyed being privy to Frame’s experiences as a struggling writer, in finding and accepting herself as her own person, and discovering her own Mirror City.

I’m left with such a nice feeling. What a remarkable writer. What a story. I can’t wait to read and re-read more of her work.

[Ryan Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read "An Angel At My Table" which is probably the best autobiography I've ever read. That book lands bang in the middle of her 3-part autobiography series and this is the third. Frame's prose and poetry are some of the best I've ever read. Outstanding.

[Arie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved

[Wendy]

This is the last volume of Janet Frame's three-part autobiography (which is the subject of a moving film directed by fellow New Zealander Janet Campion, Angel at My Table, which I highly recommend).

While more dramatic than most, the author's story resonates with the stories of many other women of her generation who struggled against the identities assigned to them by family, school, friends, even those who ostensibly try to help. In this volume, as she finally frees herself from a mistaken diagnosis of schizophrenia, which kept her institutionalized for years, she learns how to be what she'd always meant to be: a writer. As she reflects: “Some obstinacy, some persistence in myself pursued this right until at last with the help of a combination of circumstances, coincidence, providence, and good friends, I arrived at the point of knowing the agony of the luxury of trying to tell my story, of demanding and accepting the luxury of ‘the truth.’” (p.112)

The odd name of this book refers to her time in Ibiza, Spain, where she looked out over the water to what looked like a mirror image of the area where she was staying. She comes to think of the artist's role in visiting that mirror city, with the help of an "envoy," the imagination, and to understand what any serious writer has to learn:
“In my struggle to get my writing done I realized the obvious fact that the only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written: it’s a dreary awful fact that writing is like any other work with the marvelous exception of the presence of the Mirror City and the constant journeys either of oneself or of the Envoy from Mirror City.” (p.123)

Struggling against distraction, she writes:
“… a state of restlessness can be infectious and any departure from an artist’s planned routine can be a trigger to anarchy as the ideas, looking in, find nowhere to come home to.” (pp. 70-71)

This book has its flaws, but for insight into a woman's identity and the writing life, I recommend it highly.

[Frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy, propulsive read, but Janet Frame’s autobiographies make me uncomfortable, perhaps because I really relate to some of her difficult attributes, timidity and avoidance, etc. in conflict with a strong personality.

[Josh Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good but not the standout that the prior two volumes were. Possibly lessened by having read in <24hrs. But worth it alone for the particularly moving passage reflecting on loss of her father as she departs London and observes the docks.

[Emma Bolden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't talk about this without sputtering. It's that important of a book to me.

[Mary Keen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike read this and i read parts. we discussed as i'd read summaries and sections -- and we'd seen film about her.
Amazing woman and writer!

[Montse Torrejon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empezamos el libro con Janet Frame viajando, primero Londres, después para alargar su presupuesto a Ibiza y Andorra; vuelta a Londres
Durante 7 años, viaja, sobrevive, escribe y aunque suele repetir el patrón de de dejarse acompañar por hombres "protectores" consigue publicar libros y volver, siendo una escritora, a Nueva Zelanda.
También toma la decisión valiente, el viaje también lo es, de cometerse a pruebas para comprobar si su esquizofrenia es real, está vez encuentra profesionales que la escuchan, como el psiquiatra Roberto Hugh Cowley, que le explica que NO es esquizofrénica y le anima a escribir, a vivir sola, ha tomar sus propias decisiones, incluso a escribir sobre sus días de internamiento en los centros psiquiátricos, lo que hará en el libro "Rostros en el auga " que se considera su obra maestra.

[Fernanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

"All writers - all human beings - are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force... all writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land..."

I enjoyed this last book of her autobiography trilogy, but not as much as the other two. Perhaps because I found it very boring reading about England and its people and landscapes.
I love her insights on psychiatry and how important have a good, compassionate doctor. If it wasn't for that, Janet would be nobody. And she was an amazing person!!

I'm feeling like an orphan after spending so many afternoons and nights with Janet! She's a good friend of mine and I'll miss her dearly.

[Albx Villarmea · Rating 4 out of 5]

La autobiografía que más me ha llegado al corazoncito y los tres libros mas conmovedores y directos que he leído este año. La lectura que hace Janet sobre sí misma es de un autoconocimiento súper doloroso y tierno. Para considerarse una persona tímida la manera en que abre sus miedos y heridas resulta muy valiente. El prólogo a la trilogía de Jane Campion es 💖🌸🐇💖🌸🐇. Vivan las autoras neozelandesas!

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A treasured envoy

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful written exploration of leaving home and the thrills and spills of adventure and life overseas. All from a writer's perspective, fascinating.