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Living in the Maniototo
All I had experienced, all the stories I had read or dreamed came to me the moment I, a stranger, turned the key in the lock of the unknown house.'
In a sweltering basement in downtown Baltimore, Mavis Halleton, writer, ventriloquist and gossip, is struggling to write her novel when an unexpected invitation arrives. The Garretts, a couple Mavis has never heard of but who admire her work, are to spend time in Italy, and offer the use of their airy home in the Berkeley hills.
During her stay, an earthquake hits northern Italy, and Mavis, to her surprise, inherits the house. But, surrounded by museum replicas and tasteful imitations, she finds reality itself is on shaky ground.
In this highly inventive novel, reality, fiction and dreams are woven together as Janet Frame playfully explores the process of writing fiction.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1979
16 people are currently reading
412 people want to read
About the author
Janet Frame
64 books489 followersThe fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become well known. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book (The Lagoon and Other Stories) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a planned lobotomy.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
November 6, 2019
Yes -I liked this and I would like to see more readers harking back to this 1979 publication by New Zealand writer - Janet Frame.
She is what they call a 'writer's writer' -meaning that she explores the process of writing fiction in the course of writing this novel - which feels more memoir than fiction - and then she messes with our heads in a very post-modern kinda way.
Her descriptions of place are very evocative - I can feel those cold, crisp Autumn or early Spring mornings in South island, New Zealand where the shadows contain the deep colds, but the sky is blue: and she describes equally well her travels to various other foreign parts - in this book, Baltimore, and the Berkeley Hills, California - the Bay fogs rolling into the plain below and hummingbirds in the Garrett's garden.
There are also parts which are quite gloomy - and they send not a literal but a psychic chill down the spine - it seems her ideas on death are never far from her, and Frame reflects several times on her real life experiences in a psychiatric ward when she was a teenager.
I've picked a longish description - which I liked very much - one of many: and then to follow a shorter sketch where she wanders into philosophical grounds on the experience of death - those sections become a little too esoteric for my tastes.
p. 95
Since Mrs Tyndall's death both Brian and I had been taking heavy doses of childhood. I kept thinking, too, of the summers when we spent all day at the swimming baths and the beach and our hair was never dry, the strands were matted with salt, and we felt that we were fish rather than children. Our bathing suits, rolled in their towels (there was a special way of parceling up your "togs"), were forever wet, our bare feet forever made wet prints, our eyelashes were so wet we had to keep blinking as if through tears and the taste when we licked our lips or sucked imaginary snake-poison from our arm, was strong, salty. They were days of shivering and warmth, of opposing weathers without gradation. In our childhood climate, the words we used were hot, cold, wet, dry, and, at the mercy of those opposites, we shivered in the ice that formed beneath impenetrable cloud or glowed in beneficent bright blue and gold sunlight.
Her descriptions and emphasis on the quality of words reminds me of Laurie Lee. And, now for a section of gloom - she refers to the cell in the hospital as one of her homes:
P.224
Those cells were cells of despair. They were the last place to be: after that, there was nowhere; they were the rehearsals of death while the thousand eyes were the steady uncaring eyes of grass blades and sun-filled daisies and marigolds, the burr marigolds, the tickseed sunflowers that leave the stain of their touch only on the living. Made warm by them, what do the living care about death? After all the sun returns each day to the sky, the promise of morning is kept, in spite of cathedral arguments, the stony faced insistencies about the identity of the originator of the promise.
Sorry - but no idea who she is referring to here as - "the originator of the promise".
There are also sections where the prose breaks off into sections of poetry, several pages, but most of it relates directly to the plot and/or the characters and is easy to follow. The two, three, four line inserts, however provide - a sort of mincing sing-song, similar to playground ditties. So - you have been warned.
For me - the mix of quirky, and idiosyncratic; plus astute observations on people and how we form identities, several surprising plot twists - definitely amused and entertained - but it is her divine descriptions of country and weather, blankets and homes which kept me spell bound.
To finish - here is how she sets up the novel:
p. 13
Good morning. I am here to entertain you. I will make you laugh and cry. I am Violet Pansy Proudlock, an expert in near, near-distant and distant ventriloquism, for which I use my talking stick and my pocket head with all available fitments, top lip movement for smiling, head nodding, swivel eyes, eyelids for blinking, moving ears, squirting of water from the eyes for crying, and sensation wig for standing on end.
It's only when you finish the book that you understand this beginning - the writer like a magician is a creator of illusions. Those feelings you feel as you read about these fictional characters are they no less real than the feelings or thoughts you have about real people?
Who does this remind me of - Art - and his blog in Ali Smith's Winter.
Frame was there, years before Ali Smith - doing it better. Doing it superbly well, and nobody seems to read her anymore - at least not on Goodreads.
She is what they call a 'writer's writer' -meaning that she explores the process of writing fiction in the course of writing this novel - which feels more memoir than fiction - and then she messes with our heads in a very post-modern kinda way.
Her descriptions of place are very evocative - I can feel those cold, crisp Autumn or early Spring mornings in South island, New Zealand where the shadows contain the deep colds, but the sky is blue: and she describes equally well her travels to various other foreign parts - in this book, Baltimore, and the Berkeley Hills, California - the Bay fogs rolling into the plain below and hummingbirds in the Garrett's garden.
There are also parts which are quite gloomy - and they send not a literal but a psychic chill down the spine - it seems her ideas on death are never far from her, and Frame reflects several times on her real life experiences in a psychiatric ward when she was a teenager.
I've picked a longish description - which I liked very much - one of many: and then to follow a shorter sketch where she wanders into philosophical grounds on the experience of death - those sections become a little too esoteric for my tastes.
p. 95
Since Mrs Tyndall's death both Brian and I had been taking heavy doses of childhood. I kept thinking, too, of the summers when we spent all day at the swimming baths and the beach and our hair was never dry, the strands were matted with salt, and we felt that we were fish rather than children. Our bathing suits, rolled in their towels (there was a special way of parceling up your "togs"), were forever wet, our bare feet forever made wet prints, our eyelashes were so wet we had to keep blinking as if through tears and the taste when we licked our lips or sucked imaginary snake-poison from our arm, was strong, salty. They were days of shivering and warmth, of opposing weathers without gradation. In our childhood climate, the words we used were hot, cold, wet, dry, and, at the mercy of those opposites, we shivered in the ice that formed beneath impenetrable cloud or glowed in beneficent bright blue and gold sunlight.
Her descriptions and emphasis on the quality of words reminds me of Laurie Lee. And, now for a section of gloom - she refers to the cell in the hospital as one of her homes:
P.224
Those cells were cells of despair. They were the last place to be: after that, there was nowhere; they were the rehearsals of death while the thousand eyes were the steady uncaring eyes of grass blades and sun-filled daisies and marigolds, the burr marigolds, the tickseed sunflowers that leave the stain of their touch only on the living. Made warm by them, what do the living care about death? After all the sun returns each day to the sky, the promise of morning is kept, in spite of cathedral arguments, the stony faced insistencies about the identity of the originator of the promise.
Sorry - but no idea who she is referring to here as - "the originator of the promise".
There are also sections where the prose breaks off into sections of poetry, several pages, but most of it relates directly to the plot and/or the characters and is easy to follow. The two, three, four line inserts, however provide - a sort of mincing sing-song, similar to playground ditties. So - you have been warned.
For me - the mix of quirky, and idiosyncratic; plus astute observations on people and how we form identities, several surprising plot twists - definitely amused and entertained - but it is her divine descriptions of country and weather, blankets and homes which kept me spell bound.
To finish - here is how she sets up the novel:
p. 13
Good morning. I am here to entertain you. I will make you laugh and cry. I am Violet Pansy Proudlock, an expert in near, near-distant and distant ventriloquism, for which I use my talking stick and my pocket head with all available fitments, top lip movement for smiling, head nodding, swivel eyes, eyelids for blinking, moving ears, squirting of water from the eyes for crying, and sensation wig for standing on end.
It's only when you finish the book that you understand this beginning - the writer like a magician is a creator of illusions. Those feelings you feel as you read about these fictional characters are they no less real than the feelings or thoughts you have about real people?
Who does this remind me of - Art - and his blog in Ali Smith's Winter.
Frame was there, years before Ali Smith - doing it better. Doing it superbly well, and nobody seems to read her anymore - at least not on Goodreads.
October 18, 2025
I was surprised to find this book in a local thrift store until I started reading it and discovered it’s partly set in Baltimore. I then began to imagine some unsuspecting reader—unfamiliar with Janet Frame—having purchased this solely based on the Baltimore connection. I thought of them slowly growing more confused and perhaps even horrified at Frame’s prose, for she was a master of the domestic grotesque, much like her contemporary Barbara Comyns. Her portrayal here of Baltimore in the 1970s is less than flattering (and even a tad racist), as opposed to the benignly quirky descriptions penned by Anne Tyler, who, while not a native, certainly lived here long enough for her to adopt it as her home. Frame does share Tyler’s flair for crafting awkward, outsider characters, though, who generally mean well despite not knowing how to show it without coming across as off-putting. The narrator of this novel, a New Zealand writer on a writing sabbatical of sorts, does eventually move on from Baltimore to Berkeley, California, when she is offered a house-sitting arrangement by a couple who have read and enjoyed her books. The story grows increasingly weirder and disjointed after this, and I have to admit that even though I love Janet Frame she was trying my patience (and losing my attention) as the narrative careered along the tracks, occasionally jumping the rails. So, not the best place to start with Frame, but as Sarah notes in her review: her books are flawed, but she never fails to ‘make strangeness beautiful.’ If you come to fall under Frame’s spell then, at some point you’ll still likely be drawn to read this one.
July 16, 2016
Her books are flawed but I love Janet Frame. Like me, she's an outcast among outcasts. She makes strangeness beautiful.
February 18, 2019
Expect the unexpected when it comes to Janet Frame—she’s magical (I think I’ve said this before.)
Starting off with the book, things went along with this even flow and then on page 38 a “sudden plague of unreality” happened…
Our visit was short. As we left I reminded Tommy that I still had his starfish brooch and the world earrings and that I would keep them “Forever”—my feeble contradiction and denial of the disintegrators and the demolishers. He didn’t seem to hear me. With a fearful look in his eyes he turned toward some apparition beside him.
“Got you,” he cried, grasping the air.
There was a flash of light, a smell of laundry and the penetrating fumes of a powerful cleanser, then a neutral nothing-smell, not even the usual substituted forest glad or field of lavender or carnation, and all that remained of Tommy were two faded footprints on the floor.
“Things like that don’t happen,” Brian said when we had arrived home.
We were both shocked by the sudden plague of unreality.
Thus, Tommy was vaped by a tv advertisement cartoon character, The Blue Fury, that he claimed was haunting him…sure it was, right?
An explanation of sorts is on page 39:
“Those creatures and worlds that we know only in sleep and dream and mythology—of yesterday and of today—the magical technology—are emerging as usual reality in the new dimension of living and dying. And when the unreal has been accepted and made real, new realities will present themselves, forces which become gentlenesses, gentlenesses which become forces.”
Whatever it is—the fact in this fiction—Tommy is gone. POOF! Anything can happen in a Janet Frame book.
Janet Frame’s word play is always a treat, a writer’s writer, the novel is about a writer and her musings over a book she’s subsequently writing, and dealing with the interruptions of life and death the struggle to get back on track. The death of one of her two husbands goes like this…
Page 64
Two hours later, in his sleep, he coughed violently, and died. They said it was an inexplicable spasm in his throat that choked him. I was too angry to mourn. Fiction would have arranged it better, I thought. And yet it would be thrown out of fiction as unforgivable. The pronouns, tenses, participles, past and present, would fight to exclude it. And for all I know he might have choked on a remembered idiom.
A Janet Frame book is always chockful of beauty, wisdom, and wonder.
Page 92…language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live.
The power of words.
There are a dozen or so pages that I’ve dog-eared for later visits, and it’s always too easy to turn to a page, pick up and read, and get lost again. Fictions within a fiction, truth within the lies. Sense and sensibility. Prose randomly runs into poetry. The life in the Maniototo, mysterious and as desirable as “overseas”…a high plain in the south…you know, where the air is known to be rare…didn’t it mean a plain of blood after the battles fought there? But wasn’t it also a place where patients went to be cured of their sicknesses?—Does the place exist? Yes, and from the photos that I saw online, it's quite lovely.
Starting off with the book, things went along with this even flow and then on page 38 a “sudden plague of unreality” happened…
Our visit was short. As we left I reminded Tommy that I still had his starfish brooch and the world earrings and that I would keep them “Forever”—my feeble contradiction and denial of the disintegrators and the demolishers. He didn’t seem to hear me. With a fearful look in his eyes he turned toward some apparition beside him.
“Got you,” he cried, grasping the air.
There was a flash of light, a smell of laundry and the penetrating fumes of a powerful cleanser, then a neutral nothing-smell, not even the usual substituted forest glad or field of lavender or carnation, and all that remained of Tommy were two faded footprints on the floor.
“Things like that don’t happen,” Brian said when we had arrived home.
We were both shocked by the sudden plague of unreality.
Thus, Tommy was vaped by a tv advertisement cartoon character, The Blue Fury, that he claimed was haunting him…sure it was, right?
An explanation of sorts is on page 39:
“Those creatures and worlds that we know only in sleep and dream and mythology—of yesterday and of today—the magical technology—are emerging as usual reality in the new dimension of living and dying. And when the unreal has been accepted and made real, new realities will present themselves, forces which become gentlenesses, gentlenesses which become forces.”
Whatever it is—the fact in this fiction—Tommy is gone. POOF! Anything can happen in a Janet Frame book.
Janet Frame’s word play is always a treat, a writer’s writer, the novel is about a writer and her musings over a book she’s subsequently writing, and dealing with the interruptions of life and death the struggle to get back on track. The death of one of her two husbands goes like this…
Page 64
Two hours later, in his sleep, he coughed violently, and died. They said it was an inexplicable spasm in his throat that choked him. I was too angry to mourn. Fiction would have arranged it better, I thought. And yet it would be thrown out of fiction as unforgivable. The pronouns, tenses, participles, past and present, would fight to exclude it. And for all I know he might have choked on a remembered idiom.
A Janet Frame book is always chockful of beauty, wisdom, and wonder.
Page 92…language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live.
The power of words.
There are a dozen or so pages that I’ve dog-eared for later visits, and it’s always too easy to turn to a page, pick up and read, and get lost again. Fictions within a fiction, truth within the lies. Sense and sensibility. Prose randomly runs into poetry. The life in the Maniototo, mysterious and as desirable as “overseas”…a high plain in the south…you know, where the air is known to be rare…didn’t it mean a plain of blood after the battles fought there? But wasn’t it also a place where patients went to be cured of their sicknesses?—Does the place exist? Yes, and from the photos that I saw online, it's quite lovely.
January 29, 2022
Janet Frame follows her own rule in this book. That is, in art there are no rules. The idea of replicas play a massive part of the story. One character who is actually 3 and trying to tell the difficult difference between fact and fiction. This novel ranks up there among the tops of her books in my opinion. It is one of those stories where Janet Frame showed her true unique style.
I make many riddles.
The sun has burned me. I bleed.
I break and mend. I knit.
I am a garment, a prison. I protect flower and seed.
I shrink and stretch, yet I always fit.
I’m a prison you must stay in.
What am I?
Grab the book to find out.
I make many riddles.
The sun has burned me. I bleed.
I break and mend. I knit.
I am a garment, a prison. I protect flower and seed.
I shrink and stretch, yet I always fit.
I’m a prison you must stay in.
What am I?
Grab the book to find out.
August 27, 2023
I came to this book looking for a quotation. I found it on page forty-three:
Even when she is wrong, at least she is elegant. She wrote about how mundane the naming of towns was compared to the poetic Maori. One example she gives is the town Martin. That town was an example in another book I've just finished:
… for I feel that language in its widest sense is the hawk suspended above eternity, feeding from it but not of its substance and not necessarily for its life and thus never able to be translated into it; only able by a wing movement, so to speak, a cry, a shadow, to hint at what lies beneath it on the untouched, undescribed almost unknown plain.By the time I found the quotation, I was hooked. In her descriptions of color, place, feelings, writing, and language, Frame often seems in a world of her own.
Even when she is wrong, at least she is elegant. She wrote about how mundane the naming of towns was compared to the poetic Maori. One example she gives is the town Martin. That town was an example in another book I've just finished:
Or Martin, the Maori name of which is Tutaenui — Big Turd. You don’t hear much noise being made by the townsfolk of that town on changing their name. Chris Parauhi, The Tyranny of Tongues (Nelson: Yamfrass Books, 2018), 73
March 31, 2010
What is truly fun in reading this book is that the main character is unreliable. She has several alter egos and even says that her narrative can't be trusted. Further, she is a writer and actively working on her craft in the novel so we are not always sure what is real or imagined, especially since Frame convincing prose gives us no hints.
I definitely plan to buy more Janet Frame novels when I go back to en zed.
I definitely plan to buy more Janet Frame novels when I go back to en zed.
August 23, 2014
Janet Frame had an amazing command of the English language. Personally I loved her observations on human interaction. She was ever the outsider of course. Also loved her descriptions and sense of place. I did find parts of this book hard going but those bits for me didn't last. If you love more 'internal' books and magic realism, this would be a must-read for you.
November 5, 2024
Weird, beautiful. About fiction and writers and deserts. Obsessed with language and how it works. A lovely book.
December 3, 2021
I'm a huge fan of Janet Frame's writing. But I must admit that, despite many interesting and beautifully written passages, I wasn't wholly sold on this particular novel until the very end, the last chapter, practically the very last page. There it all comes to a pretty satisfying conclusion, even though I'd seen the fact of the ending coming a mile off, it's the way that the narrative brings the themes together that worked for me.
I hesitate to elaborate as I don't think most readers will have missed what I would say about its themes and I feel like this is a novel one should explore on one's own without my spoilers if you haven't yet read it. Therefore my only advice is to stick with it as it kind of jerks you around from place to place, thing to thing, character to character--while it feels rather disjointed and non-linear and even a bit frustrating at times, it does all come together in the end, I think, to make something moving and profound of itself.
It also has that meta-fiction thing going on which I really like--and that too seems sort of weak or not that interesting at first, but it too pays off well very near the end. It's a novel to stick with.
I hesitate to elaborate as I don't think most readers will have missed what I would say about its themes and I feel like this is a novel one should explore on one's own without my spoilers if you haven't yet read it. Therefore my only advice is to stick with it as it kind of jerks you around from place to place, thing to thing, character to character--while it feels rather disjointed and non-linear and even a bit frustrating at times, it does all come together in the end, I think, to make something moving and profound of itself.
It also has that meta-fiction thing going on which I really like--and that too seems sort of weak or not that interesting at first, but it too pays off well very near the end. It's a novel to stick with.
August 4, 2024
Strange and estranging
June 22, 2022
This book is great where the author is playing with language. Janet Frame is undoubtedly a master of words and of poetic expression. She is also very inventive and always able to surprise her readers.
Anyway, I have a problem with this book because the characters are not at all plausible. I might accept events which are incredible or impossible, but for me an essential criterium for literature is the characterization of the individuals. And taking Mavis´ second husband who decides to become a debt collector when he has been an enthusiastic French teacher and there has been no plausible motive to change – sorry, this simply does not work for me. Another example: her friend Brian, wanting his nephew (who had problems with stealing) to stroll around with boys who are not only stealing but robbing people habitually – and when he hears that the boy has stolen coins froms friends of his he reacts very angry.
Ok, people are not always predictable in real life as well, but the people in “Living in the Maniototo” often act without motivation.
Apart from this – reading texts of female authors of this time (let´s say, 20-30 years after the second world war) – I get aware how lucky I (and most of the female readers) can be to have been born later, when a woman is not condemned to become either housewife or teacher (writer somehow seems to be rather a kind of unusual techer) but has a real choice to choose a work and not be dependent on a man (husband).
Anyway, I have a problem with this book because the characters are not at all plausible. I might accept events which are incredible or impossible, but for me an essential criterium for literature is the characterization of the individuals. And taking Mavis´ second husband who decides to become a debt collector when he has been an enthusiastic French teacher and there has been no plausible motive to change – sorry, this simply does not work for me. Another example: her friend Brian, wanting his nephew (who had problems with stealing) to stroll around with boys who are not only stealing but robbing people habitually – and when he hears that the boy has stolen coins froms friends of his he reacts very angry.
Ok, people are not always predictable in real life as well, but the people in “Living in the Maniototo” often act without motivation.
Apart from this – reading texts of female authors of this time (let´s say, 20-30 years after the second world war) – I get aware how lucky I (and most of the female readers) can be to have been born later, when a woman is not condemned to become either housewife or teacher (writer somehow seems to be rather a kind of unusual techer) but has a real choice to choose a work and not be dependent on a man (husband).
October 13, 2018
Painful at first and often befuddling - but ultimately very rewarding and very eccentrically brilliant.
October 19, 2025
An original, clever, imaginative, well written novel with a surprise ending which should entice you to reread the opening chapters!
The novel is narrated through a writer who has multiple identities, including the ventriloquist Violet Pansy Proudlock, the gossip Alice Thumb, and the writer Mavis Furness Barnwell Halleton. The protagonist is Mavis Halleton who has survived the deaths of two husbands and tries to recover from these surprising setbacks. She decides to travel to the USA to visit some old friends. There she expects to house sit, living a quiet life, whilst her friends go on holiday. The Garretts offer Mavis their house for six weeks as they go on holiday to Italy, encouraging Mavis to spend the free time writing. They have read and enjoyed her two published novels. However things take an unexpected turn when four uninvited guests turn up on the Garrett’s doorstep, wanting to stay at the house. Mavis reluctantly agrees to allow the four to stay. Whilst there, Mavis does all she can to make the four comfortable without getting to know them.
Mavis has two adult children, however they have no part in this novel.
What makes this novel unique is that the author becomes a character in the novel, interchanging with Mavis. For example, Mavis alludes to being in an asylum and the process of writing fiction.
The book explores the writing process, the blurring of reality and fiction, and identity.
The ending comes as quite an unexpected surprise. The story goes along at a fairly slow steady pace, with some well described passages, then the twist comes and everything falls into place.
A novel requiring a reread. A recommended read.
Here is a quote from the book:
“I have to cry out here that language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live.”
This book was first published in 1979.
The novel is narrated through a writer who has multiple identities, including the ventriloquist Violet Pansy Proudlock, the gossip Alice Thumb, and the writer Mavis Furness Barnwell Halleton. The protagonist is Mavis Halleton who has survived the deaths of two husbands and tries to recover from these surprising setbacks. She decides to travel to the USA to visit some old friends. There she expects to house sit, living a quiet life, whilst her friends go on holiday. The Garretts offer Mavis their house for six weeks as they go on holiday to Italy, encouraging Mavis to spend the free time writing. They have read and enjoyed her two published novels. However things take an unexpected turn when four uninvited guests turn up on the Garrett’s doorstep, wanting to stay at the house. Mavis reluctantly agrees to allow the four to stay. Whilst there, Mavis does all she can to make the four comfortable without getting to know them.
Mavis has two adult children, however they have no part in this novel.
What makes this novel unique is that the author becomes a character in the novel, interchanging with Mavis. For example, Mavis alludes to being in an asylum and the process of writing fiction.
The book explores the writing process, the blurring of reality and fiction, and identity.
The ending comes as quite an unexpected surprise. The story goes along at a fairly slow steady pace, with some well described passages, then the twist comes and everything falls into place.
A novel requiring a reread. A recommended read.
Here is a quote from the book:
“I have to cry out here that language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live.”
This book was first published in 1979.
September 28, 2021
Living in the Maniototo is an intriguing, but flawed, book. It's not a conventional novel, but a series of stories, sketches, and poetry compiled a bit like a journal. The narrator is a novelist, so it is hard to know what is "real" and what is not; we don't even know what her name is. She lists many aliases throughout the book.
When Janet Frame is brilliant, she is really brilliant, and I felt that many times in this book. My favorite part was easily the poetry, plus the numerous pieces where she dissects and plays around with the process of writing fiction. Some of the stories are also written with a keen eye, such as the narrators' two idiosyncratic husbands and her trip to see a fraudulent "miracle maker."
However, the book is marred by some sections not as strong as others, which can become downright tedious to read. There are a bunch of chapters where the narrator's friend's nephew comes to visit him which aren't the strongest, but the worst part is in the latter half of the book, where the narrative is taken over by a cast of bland characters (likely the narrator's own creations, though Frame leaves it to us to decide). For me this part was downright grueling to read, as nice as Frame's writing can be at times. I couldn't bring myself to be interested in the characters no matter how hard I tried.
When Janet Frame is brilliant, she is really brilliant, and I felt that many times in this book. My favorite part was easily the poetry, plus the numerous pieces where she dissects and plays around with the process of writing fiction. Some of the stories are also written with a keen eye, such as the narrators' two idiosyncratic husbands and her trip to see a fraudulent "miracle maker."
However, the book is marred by some sections not as strong as others, which can become downright tedious to read. There are a bunch of chapters where the narrator's friend's nephew comes to visit him which aren't the strongest, but the worst part is in the latter half of the book, where the narrative is taken over by a cast of bland characters (likely the narrator's own creations, though Frame leaves it to us to decide). For me this part was downright grueling to read, as nice as Frame's writing can be at times. I couldn't bring myself to be interested in the characters no matter how hard I tried.
October 26, 2019
Funny, irreverent take on NZ life of my parent's generation. Satirical and sensitive by turns, great authorial voice through the narrator, a good place to be for a while, meeting up with the peeps she meets, her views on them, and the fictionalised setting of North Auckland, amongst others, is entertaining. Delightful, I'd have to call this, whimsical, clear-headed and detailed and roundabout and probing. Loving the superficiality of words, but also clear on deeper needs and faults of being human, a happy read so far.
May 5, 2020
I started reading this at 05:05 on the morning of the 05/05/2020 and I thought about the irony of success and hard work and satisfaction as I read and read this book. I thought about the selfishness of kindness and laughed at the ego in life. I liked this book for its honesty and it's litany of so many many lies.
November 26, 2023
I really struggled with this one. I thought the writing was so beautiful and there were parts that were so interesting, but I was at a loss as to how everything connected. I know that I was missing something/not quite getting the point so I don’t hold this against Frame, but this novel seemed to go fully over my head. It felt like reading a long poem.
May 14, 2023
Unique. Nothing quite like it. Janet is as sharp as they come. With a sharp wit - as sharp as I have seen - she decimates her characters. Mostly a savage ripping of their personalities, but with an incrediblr black humour.
December 26, 2023
Well written with some great references to 70s / 80s NZ suburban life, refers to life in the mental institution. Worth reading more Janet Frame. But plot wandered off into an area less interesting... 4 new inhabitants in a USA manor...
June 16, 2024
A style of writing so unique so unexpected
Words that feel delicious they roll and tumble from page to page.
I loved this book a total escape into a perfect language
a must read in fact I will read it again I know
Words that feel delicious they roll and tumble from page to page.
I loved this book a total escape into a perfect language
a must read in fact I will read it again I know
July 10, 2025
Janet Frame writes so beautifully, it was a pleasure to read even when describing things that would otherwise be mundane.
Ironically most of the book is set about as far from Maniototo as you can get. I loved how she merged reality and fiction and took us along for the ride.
Ironically most of the book is set about as far from Maniototo as you can get. I loved how she merged reality and fiction and took us along for the ride.
July 13, 2025
Not my favourite work but one of my favourite authors. Was it me (probably) but I found myself lost in the layers of artifice. But the sheer joy of Frames wordage remains, the poetry of her prose. Not a re-read but a glad I did read.
September 9, 2025
Surprisingly little of this book was set in the Maniototo. I enjoyed the satire. Enjoyed it most when I (slightly tipsily) read the first half in an airport and on a flight --- the second half went more slowly, probably because I was sober.
October 14, 2017
Patience needed but good
May 15, 2019
A strange and wonderful novel by the eccentric New Zealand prose stylist. Something about homelands, houses, and husbands.
October 12, 2019
It's a masterclass in the art of writing fiction, as told through the shifting identities of one Mavis Halleton, writer, ventriloquist and gossip. Playfully pulls the rug from under reality itself.
January 21, 2021
Rather less about the Maniototo than I was expecting, but lovely writing.
January 10, 2023
This is my favorite Janet Frame book to date.
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