Novel
Owls Do Cry
Janet Frame · 1957
Synopsis
In a small coastal town on the South Island, before 1940, the Withers family grows up, poor and isolated: the father, Bob, struggles to pay the bills, the mother holds on without a word. Francie is soon to leave school for the wool mill, Toby is epileptic, Chicks is the youngest, and Daphne has the imagination of a poet. The children look for treasure at the rubbish dump, where tragedy strikes Francie. The crisis that follows leads Daphne to the psychiatric hospital, from which her voice runs through the book; the narrative picks up the Withers twenty years later.
Context
The first novel by its author, it was written at Takapuna, in the hut lent to her by an Auckland writer, and finished in August 1955. Pegasus Press of Christchurch published it in April 1957, under a cover by Dennis Beytagh that became a classic. The reception was favourable, except in Ōamaru, where the book was judged too dark and too personal. Loosely drawn from the author's life and her years in asylums, it appeared in French in 1994 with Joëlle Losfeld, translated by Catherine Vieilledent.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred and thirty pages in French. Several voices cross in it, among them Daphne's, and the language often takes precedence over the story.
Prizes and reception
The novel that launched its author's career; The Guardian called it the first great New Zealand novel.
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