Janet Frame still enigma

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 21

Janet Frame still enigma

From

MERILYN CHAMBERS

of NZPA in

London

Janet Frame seems set for posterity among the best of international writers. So say her London publishers, Women’s Press, who have published four of her books since the company was established in 1978, and are about to release two more. For the writer herself it seemed that she was more under sufferance than ever. Returning to London — where she once spent seven years living in bed-sits — she gave her first public reception to all but bolt out the door as praise reigned and adoring fans closed in. Her visit coincided with the British publications of her second autobiographical volume “Angels at my Table” and her own choice of short stories, “You Are Now Entering The Human Heart.” But at 60-odd, looking remarkably young and meek, Janet Frame remained as

self-effacing as ever, retaining the shyness, nerves and apprehension which she writes so forthrightly about as having led her straight' into “the bin.” A Women’s Press spokeswoman, Katy Nicholson, said: “We hope to set an injustice right to see that a major novelist receives some of the recognition she greatly deserves. “It is scandalous that her books had not been published in Britain before. Personally I believe it is because she is a New Zealander that it is difficult for the literary establishment in Britain to appreciate her writing to the full.” Both the books newly released in Britain have already been published in New Zealand and the United States where she is widely

recognised. It was because of her growing reputation she was invited to attend the International Authors’ Festival

at Toronto recently. Having written books and poetry since an early age, she has written 18 books, and has 10 major works published. Several of her works are set in Britain and the United States where she has lived at times. Apart from her autobiographies, she said that in her books “my characters often echo my own attitudes.” In London she continues to be reviewed as an enigma. “The Sunday Times” commented: “As if in compensation for all her early trials, which include some fairly serious blunders on the part of the medical profession, New Zealand has heaped her with honours. “This is perhaps surprising from what one still thinks of as a predominately extrovert frontier society, for her writing is introspective, visionary, even downright strange.”