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Frame, Janet

Frame, Janet (Janet Paterson Frame Clutha) (klOO'thu) [key], 1924–2004, New Zealand novelist, b. Dunedin. Frame's complex, disturbing novels are marked by startling images and masterful language. Often drawn from her own experience of institutionalization in psychiatric hospitals for eight years (after a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia), they depict disturbed and often visionary people living on the edge of madness or death. These themes are especially vivid in her first published work, a book of short stories entitled The Lagoon (1951), and her first two novels, Owls Do Cry (1957) and Faces in the Water (1961). Frame's other works include a volume of poems, The Pocket Mirror (1967); the short-story collection The Reservoir and Other Stories (1966); such novels as The Rainbirds (1968), Intensive Care (1970), Daughter Buffalo (1972), Living in the Maniototo (1979), and The Carpathians (1988); and a children's book.

See her autobiographical trilogy, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985); biography by M. King (2000); studies by P. Evans (1977), J. Delbaere, ed. (1992), J. D. Panny (1993), and G. Mercer (1994); biographical film, An Angel at My Table (1990), dir. by J. Campion.