It's been so long since I've read the works of my favorite New Zealand author, I dashed to the library to feed my appetite.
I've never seen her books in op shops, hardly surprising, but it means I don't own any of the glorious works I discovered at age 16.
Janet Frame was born in Dunedin in 1924 and bears a remarkable resemblance to women in my mother's family, while Mum was born around the same year in nearby Invercargill.
When I read her first autobiography, To The Is-Land, I felt I was taking a peek into the lives of my kin, who also scratched their way through the Depression, just two hours away.
As a child and young woman, Janet struggled with self-acceptance, loathed her signature red bushy hair, the hardships of farm life and the clothing which branded her family as poverty-stricken.
See??? The hair! The hair!
Jane Campion directed An Angel At My Table, the story of Janet's journey to adulthood, her misdiagnosis of schizophrenia, years of pain and horror spent in asylums, her narrow escape from an involuntary lobotomy and the early days of what would become a victorious literary career.Yes.
I am a Janet Frame fanatic.
“Quick, where is the Red Cross God with the ointment and plaster the needle and thread and the clean linen bandages to mummify our festering dreams?”
“It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we’re always in other places, lost, like sheep.”
I imagine Janet with pink hair would look like something like this while collecting eggs, shirking human contact to read in secret and dream in the shade.
1930s silk slip, and 1950s beaded cardigan - Etsy
1940s skirt (part of a suit) - eBay
Silk scarf - gift from divoooon Tamera
Earrings and necklace - craft markets
VW Melissa gumboots - Melissa sample sale
The Stylist took these pics, isn't she clever?
Baci,
Desiree xo
