Frame, Janet

Frame, Janet (Janet Paterson Frame Clutha) (kl`thə), 1924–2004, New Zealand novelist, b. Dunedin. Frame's complex, disturbing novels are marked by startling images and masterful language. Often drawn from her own experience of institutionalization in psychiatric hospitals for eight years (after a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia), they depict disturbed and often visionary people living on the edge of madness or death. These themes are especially vivid in her first published work, a book of short stories entitled The Lagoon (1951), and her first two novels, Owls Do Cry (1957) and Faces in the Water (1961). Frame's other works include a volume of poems, The Pocket Mirror (1967); the short-story collection The Reservoir and Other Stories (1966); such novels as The Rainbirds (1968), Intensive Care (1970), Daughter Buffalo (1972), Living in the Maniototo (1979), and The Carpathians (1988); and a children's book.

Bibliography

See her autobiographical trilogy, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985); biography by M. King (2000); studies by P. Evans (1977), J. Delbaere, ed. (1992), J. D. Panny (1993), and G. Mercer (1994); biographical film, An Angel at My Table (1990), dir. by J. Campion.

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Frame (Clutha), Janet (Paterson)

(born Aug. 28, 1924, Dunedin, N.Z.—died Jan. 29, 2004, Dunedin) New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, and poet. After an impoverished childhood, she trained as a teacher. Her first book was the story collection The Lagoon (1951). Several times committed to mental institutions, she narrowly escaped undergoing a frontal lobotomy. Her novel Owls Do Cry (1957) incorporated poetry and prose in its investigation of the border between sanity and madness. Her many other novels, several of which draw on Maori legends, include Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963) and The Carpathians (1988). One of her three volumes of memoirs, An Angel at My Table (1984), was filmed by Jane Campion.