FRAME, JANET

born Aug. 28, 1924, Dunedin, N.Z. in full Janet Paterson Frame Clutha leading New Zealand writer of novels, short fiction, and poetry. Frame was the daughter of an impoverished railway engineer and was educated in New Zealand. Her early memories of poverty, the deaths of two sisters, and several stays in psychiatric hospitals provided much of the impetus for her work. During her hospitalization, she read the classics voraciously and then began to write. Her first book, The Lagoon (1951), was a collection of short stories expressing the sense of isolation and insecurity of those who feel they do not fit into a normal world. Owls Do Cry (1957), an experimental novel, expanded upon the theme of The Lagoon. Incorporating both poetry and prose and lacking a conventional plot, Owls Do Cry investigates the worth of the individual and the ambiguous border between sanity and madness. In all her novels, Frame depicts a society deprived of wholeness by its refusal to come to terms with disorder, irrationality, and madness. Among her other novels are Faces in the Water (1961), The Edge of the Alphabet (1962), Snowman, Snowman: Fables and Fantasies (1963), Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963), The Adaptable Man (1965), A State of Siege (1966), The Rainbirds (1968), Intensive Care (1970), Daughter Buffalo (1972), and Living in the Maniototo (1979). She wrote three volumes of memoirs, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985). These autobiographical works were adapted for a film, An Angel at My Table (1990), directed by Jane Campion.