YELLOW FLOWERS IN THE ANTIPODEAN ROOM

by Janet Frame ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1968

Aspects of dislocation (primarily madness with a certain autobiographical enclosure she has rarely escaped) have structured all of Janet Frame's work ever since the early novels, Owls Do Cry and Faces in the Water while her technique, allusive, ""difficult,"" has further isolated her from anything except a special audience. Without in any fashion diminishing her particular sensibility, she is more accessible here although, essentially, little has changed. Godfrey, a very ordinary little family man, a booking clerk in a New Zealand Tourist Bureau, the husband of Beatrice and father of two children, is a casualty of the streets. Believed dead, he comes to in the mortuary and is returned to his family. But the ""ward marvel and monster"" finds that Beatrice is a touch resentful and disrupted. His new suit has been given away while he wonders who has usurped his chair. He is prone to ""morbid"" thoughts and he buys an electric blanket to thaw ""the blanket of death."" Before long he is given notice at work because he is an embarrassment; everyone is uneasy to find that death hasn't stayed put and the singsong chants and names of children are succeeded by sticks and stones and. . . . The symbolism can easily be set aside and this can just be read as a haunted, haunting fable of a revenant in which the recognitions of the everyday are extended, enhanced by Janet Frame's extraordinary powers of imaginative magnification.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION