Wrestling With the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame [Paperback]

Michael King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002 | ISBN-10: 0330352776 | ISBN-13: 978-0330352772

A beautifully written biography about the talented, reclusive Janet Frame; Janet Frame, born in 1924, came to international attention through her poignant and beautifully written autobiographical series, An Angel at my Table. New Zealand's most celebrated yet most reclusive author, her early life makes tragic reading: one brother still-born, another epileptic; two sisters dead of heart failure; Frame herself committed to mental hospitals for the best part of a decade. All this and more propelled Frame into a state of intense depression and suffering. King's inspiring biography tells the story of a woman who climbed out of an abyss of overwhelming unhappiness to take control of her life and become one of the great writers of her time. With unprecendented access to Frame's personal papers and to the woman herself, Michael King has fashioned a biography of astonishing intimacy and frankness. That Frame has previously been known above all else for her reticence makes this achievement all the more remarkable.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Remarkable and resilient, Janet Frame is New Zealand's most accomplished writer. She's the author of 11 novels, dozens of poems and stories and three volumes of autobiography (including the work that inspired Jane Campion's film An Angel at My Table). Now in her 70s and having suffered a stroke, she is largely silent. In this rigorously researched authorized biography, fellow New Zealander King (Death of a Rainbow Warrior) looks back over Frame's anguished life. At her request, the bookAwhich draws from previously unavailable personal documentsAlacks critical literary analysis (although King does note that her writing conveys the "sense that reality itself is a fiction, and one's grasp on it no more than preposterous pretense and pretension"). But the focus here is not on Frame's works; instead, King describes her life as wordsmith and survivor. In effect two books, the first half of Wrestling with the Angel is a dramatic account of Frame's struggle to survive a painful and emotionally troubled life (two of her sisters drowned, and she attempted suicide) and to write. King details Frame's early lifeAher travels into and out of psychiatric hospitals (where her anxiety neuroses were dangerously misdiagnosed as schizophreniaAshe narrowly escaped a lobotomy)Aas well as the writing career she began in her mid-30s. In the anticlimactic second half of the book, he describes Frame's succ?s d'estime: the literary prizes she won, the money troubles that followed and her compulsive moving from place to place (five times in one two-year period), in New Zealand and abroad, which testified to the persistence of her unexorcised anxieties. King's biography is a competent account of an unusual lifeAthough no replacement for Frame's autobiography. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"The Frame sisters thought of themselves as Bront s: because they held, by right, 'silk purses' of words; and because their family was an anvil on which disasters fell." Such tragediesDpoverty, an epileptic, alcoholic brother, two sisters who died of heart failure while swimming, a third sister misdiagnosed a schizophrenic and hospitalized for almost ten yearsDmarked the early life of Janet Frame, New Zealand's greatest modern writer. With Frame's cooperation, fellow New Zealander King (Death of a Rainbow Warrior) has written a sympathetic and comprehensive biography, incorporating Frame's diaries, hospital records, and letters as well as quoting extensively from her memoirs (later adapted by Jane Campion into her marvelous film, Angel at My Table). Frame's story makes for dramatic and fascinating reading (she narrowly avoided a lobotomy when her first short story collection won a prize); unfortunately, there is very little analysis of how Frame transformed these painful events into literary works of great beauty and originality. This is not quite King's fault as Frame requested that he not critique her work. Still, King does U.S. readers a great service by calling attention to a unique writer who should be better appreciated here. For larger academic and public library literature collections.DWilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 538 pages
• Publisher: Picador (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330352776
• ISBN-13: 978-0330352772
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,910,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)