Towards Another Summer [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Fiction) [Preloaded Digital Audio Player]

Janet Frame (Author), Heather Bolton (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2009 | Series: Playaway Adult Fiction

Self-styled writer Grace Cleave has writers block, and her anxiety is only augmented by her chronic aversion to leaving her home, to be ''among people, even for five or ten minutes.'' And so it is with trepidation that she accepts an invitation to spend a weekend away from London in the north of England. Once there, she feels more and more like a migratory bird, as the pull of her native New Zealand makes life away from it seem transitory. Grace longs to find her place in the world, but first she must learn to be comfortable in her own skin, feathers and all. From the author of An Angel at My Table comes an exquisitely written novel of exile and return, homesickness and belonging.Written in 1963 when Janet Frame was living in London, this is of a novel she considered too personal to be published while she was alive

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924–2004) will stand as one of the most sensitive, forthright, and adventurous illuminators of human consciousness. The author of many celebrated novels, stories, and a three-volume autobiography, Frame survived a turbulent and tragic childhood, mental illness, and nearly disastrous medical treatment to reap numerous awards. The cost of literary success is the subject of this 1963 novel, appearing for the first time in the U.S., about a writer, Grace Cleave, who has left sunny, lush New Zealand for sooty, crushing London. Grace accepts an invitation to spend a weekend with a kind journalist and his family in the country, then fails miserably to overcome her debilitating self-consciousness. Equally flummoxed by the snowy landscape and the warmth of Philip’s household, she turns incoherent and retreats into all-consuming memories of her childhood. So revealing is this moody, metaphysical, and rhapsodic novel, Frame set it aside. Wisely rescued and posthumously published, this exquisite portrait of a mind under pressure will revitalize appreciation for a poetic master stylist, sharp wit, deep thinker, and consummate artist. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Intensely personal, her writing is always spiralling in on itself, towards the condition of myth, and yet it nails the moment, pins down experiences so fleeting that others would never grasp them. What eludes ordinary language, she can capture in the extraordinary argot of her imagination." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Preloaded Digital Audio Player
• Publisher: Playaway (July 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1742141765
• ISBN-13: 978-1742141763
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Minor work, April 9, 2009

By 

ExPat "ExPat" (NZ/UK/US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Towards Another Summer (Hardcover)

We have come to expect posthumous works to be inferior to those the artist chooses to release in their own lifetime. This is no exception.

Although savvy publishers have marketed this novella as "too personal" for publication in Frame's lifetime, it seems more likely that the author held it back not because it was too revealing (indeed, her early novels are far more personal) but because it failed to meet her own high standards.

Those familiar with Frame's fiction will most likely be disappointed by this work, which seems to be less a fully-fledged work of fiction than a protracted personal essay. Here, many of the subtleties and complexities of Frame's best work are reduced to mere observations and asides, while her gift for metaphor and cadence likewise suffers. It is telling that Frame wrote this while struggling to complete another novel, as this sense of frustration and uncertainty infects "Towards Another Summer."

In short, this work is recommended reading for completists only.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doubts Dispelled, July 21, 2011

By 

The Rat - See all my reviews

This review is from: Towards Another Summer (Paperback)

When approaching a posthumous work, one always wonders if it is as good or as relevant as the rest of a writer's production. Towards another summer is one of those rare books which haunt you long after you've closed it. And so yes, thinking back about the novel, one feels gratitude that it exists... and could be published.

Jane Campion once said of Janet Frame that "A poetic soul has rarely come better disguised." In Towards Another Summer, the feathery disguise worn by the artist(she is a migratory bird) barely conceals her poetic soul.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Small Beauties, May 3, 2010

By 

Jennifer Harrington (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Towards Another Summer (Hardcover)

Perhaps too easily enticed by an unexpected-last novel from the inimitable Janet Frame, I found this book a necessary completion of her life's work and a must-read for any Frame devotee. Like many of Frame's novels, Towards Another Summer may hold narrative as secondary to prose, but this has been - and remains - one of the many small beauties of her work.