PRIZES - Selected Short Stories

Janet Frame - Vintage - $34.99

Here is the publisher's back cover blurb which I reckon sums up very well this 20 February publication.

Prizes: Selected Short Stories is the most comprehensive
selection of Janet Frame’s stories ever published, taken from the four different collections released during her lifetime and featuring many of her best stories.

Written over four decades, they range from stories from her classic prize-winning collection The Lagoon and Other Stories, first published in 1952, right up to the volume You Are Now Entering the Human Heart, published in the 1980s.

This new selection also includes five works that have not previously been collected.

Janet Frame’s versatility dazzles. Her themes range from childhood to old age to death and beyond. Within the pages of one book the reader is transported from small-town New Zealand to inner-city London, and from realism to fantasy.
This volume offers the perfect sample of the many styles of Janet Frame’s unique and powerful writing.

I’m a short story addict, both reading and writing them, and I always keep hoping for the perfect story.’
JANET FRAME TO TIM CURNOW, JANUARY 1984

‘Quite simply, she’s a stunning writer.’ — DOMINION POST, SEPTEMBER 2007
‘Frame is, and will remain, divine.’ — ALICE SEBOLD

Footnote:

Whomever it was at Random House NZ who wrote the cover copy above got it spot on The Bookman reckons. Frame's versatility does indeed dazzle. You see it in her subject matter, in her writing style and in the length of her stories. Some run to 20 pages, most are shorter, the occasional one barely makes a page. My favourite, My Father's Best Suit, a two page seemingly simple story about a proud man who in the days of the depression couldn't afford a new suit. Then of course there is The Reservoir, one of her real masterpieces, but there are more than 40 in total and not a dud among them. And of course there are those five stories that have not previously been collected which most readers will not have read.

This will be a most welcome addition to the bookshelves of her legion of admirers.

And here is some more exciting news on the Janet Frame front:

Another Janet Frame documentary has been posted on the NZ On Screen site:

Wrestling with the Angel.

While not in full, there are 3 excerpts from this documentary on the site.

Synopsis:

A documentary about author Janet Frame based on the eponymous 2000 biography by Michael King. It travels through the well-known themes of Frame's biography - her alleged mental illness, family tragedies, overseas stays, how she began writing - but presents new insights through interviews with close friends and key figures.

Michael King provided most of the research for the film and he provides an often-amusing account of Frame's life.

This is notably King's last interview for film; he was killed in a car accident in 2004.

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/wrestling-with-the-angel-2004