Living in the Maniototo
by Janet Frame
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Description
Through the eyes of a woman of myriad personalities - ventriloquist, gossip and writer - Janet Frame playfully explores the process of writing fiction. Through the eyes of a woman of myriad personalities - ventriloquist, gossip and writer - Janet Frame playfully explores the process of writing fiction- the avoidances, interruptions and irrelevancies, as well as a teasing blurring between fact and fiction. The landscape of the Maniototo becomes 'the bloody plain' of the imagination, as the show more narrator tells us about her marriages and children, her friends (real and imagined), her travels (between New Zealand and the United States) and her stay in the house left in her care by friends travelling in Italy. She must face the reality of death as well as probe the authenticity of the modern world. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Not my favourite work, but by one of my favourite writers. An I'm glad I read rather than a will read again.
Not my favorite Janet Frame book but still engaging.
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Published Reviews
Frame is a crafty, if occasionally murky, writer. Here, though, her multiple surfaces lock up to produce something thoughtful and very fissionable: a “replica or a replica dreaming of a replica of dreams,” i.e., fiction-writing. Frame's satire on California personalities is a bit tired, but her gaily played-out metaphor of invention, living in the “manifold,” retains a lively snap. She show more treats the book like one of those miniature glass balls which snows when you shake it. Playful, deft work, then, by a writer of eccentric strengths. show less
added by poppycocteau
Lists
Australia, New Zealand and Oceania
88 works; 20 members
Books published by The Women's Press
14 works; 1 member
Author Information
51+ Works 4,677 Members
Janet Frame is a writer. She was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1924. Frame has written eleven novels, five collections of short stories, a volume of poetry, and a children's book. She has received the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Turnavsky Prize, a Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, a Robert Burns Fellowship, and a Sargeson Fellowship. She show more was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from Otago University and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and she is a past President of Honour of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Her three autobiographies, To the Island, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City, were turned into a three-part television series, and then a 1990 motion picture directed by Jane Campion. Frame was awarded the CBE in 1983. In 2015 Janet Frame's 1957 debut novel, Owls Do Cry, topped the second annual Great Kiwi Classic poll run by the New Zealand Book Council and Auckland Writers Festival. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Virago Modern Classics (545)
Common Knowledge
- Dedication
- Dedicated to my dear friends living
and dead who will know - First words
- There's a sentence which used to fascinate me when I overheard it in bus queues, shops, in the street: "I've buried two husband, you know."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Alice Thumb herself, would continue to live and work in the house of replicas, usefully having all in mind - the original, the other, and the manifold.
- Blurbers
- Goff, Martyn; Shrapnel, Norman; Atwood, Margaret
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 228
- Popularity
- 141,700
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.60)
- Languages
- 5 — English, German, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 5
