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Towards Another Summer [Hardcover]

Janet Frame (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Book Description

April 1, 2009
“Self-styled” writer Grace Cleave has writer’s 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 the universally acclaimed 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 the first publication of a novel she considered too personal to be published while she was alive.

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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

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."

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Counterpoint (April 1, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 158243476X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1582434766
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #610,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Minor work, April 9, 2009
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.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Small Beauties, May 3, 2010
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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.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Doubts Dispelled, July 21, 2011
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.
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