Janet Frame

An Autobiography

To the Is-land

Melody Izard

Janet Frame, one of New Zealand's best-known writers, remembers her early years in dreamy, thought-swimming sentences, chock-full of poetic, strung-together adjectives. Her family is made up of her father who "was inclined to dourness with a strong sense of formal behavior that did not allow him the luxury of reminiscence"; her mother whose "titties were always there, like the cow's teats for an occasional squirt into our mouths"; Bruddie, her brother who (poor thing) developed epilepsy and had to endure his whole life being told by his father that the only cure he needed for these convulsions was to "stop it if he wanted to"; Myrtle, Janet's older sister, who once learning what married couples do, demonstrated the new found knowledge with a neighborhood boy to Janet and her friend (who promptly shared the experience with her mother and father); Dot and Chicks, her two younger sisters, who we don't learn a whole lot about; and various cats and dogs that roam though her life. 

This is the first of a three book set of her autobiography and she takes us from her first memories to her entrance into the future "which had been talked of and dreamed of for so long". This is the story of her journey to becoming a writer.

To the Is-land An Autobiography

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