Janet Frame – Towards Another Summer

The Independent“Grace takes refuge in the past, imagining herself a "migratory bird"...” Published the same year as The Bell Jar, Frame's mental state is debated almost as much as her fiction...

The Telegraph“Frame's heroine, Grace Cleave, is a 'writer, self-styled'...” A comic, melancholy and piercingly observant excursion into the borderlands of the divided self...

The Times“As her mind wheels, words stick fast and she balks like a nervy horse...” All of us will have known the agony of feeling out of place in another's domain. What is so remarkable about Frame is her ability to raise such quotidian crises to the level of comi-tragedy...

The New York Times“Frame’s sad, comic fish-out-of-water story needs neither explanation...” She’s overwhelmed by the metastasizing minutiae of ordinary comportment. Frame’s sad, slyly comic fish-out-of-water story needs neither explanation nor excuse, and Grace’s aloneness isn’t a medical condition — it’s a human one...

The New Yorker“Not yet reviewed”

Guardian“No literary curiosity but a deeply rewarding and beautiful novel...” What eludes ordinary language, she can capture in the extraordinary argot of her imagination. She wasn't divorced from reality - rather, she had a private glimpse of its heart...

Publishers Weekly“Not yet reviewed”

Financial Times“Contains deep wells of poetry and humanity...” Frame gives a brilliant sense of the outsider's struggle to grasp the workings of "ordinary life". We rejoice in the lucidity of her observations...

Scotsman“Not yet reviewed”

Book Bag“You will be rewarded and be reaching for more of her work...” The first four or five chapters are a little obscure and heavy going, but it is worth the ploughing through. The pages echo not just with homesickness, but with a profound loneliness...