Frame's Faces in the Water came to my attention after watching Angel at my Table many years ago, before anyone could buy books online. I went to my local bookstore and had to have it special ordered, however, not before the bookseller commented that she had had a lot of orders for Frame's books lately. That was sometime ago, that I read her book but to this day I remember most vividly the feeling that I came away with, that...
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Janet Frame's Faces in the Water belongs on the same shelf with such contemporary books: The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But in its grim earnestness and somber naturalism of reality, it is a biographical novel that is on an echelon all by itself. Janet Frame, one of New Zealand's most redoubtable and esteemed novelists and twice a contender for the Noble Prize in Literature, used facets of her own (earlier)...
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This book, fictionally based on Miss Frame's near decade spent in mental hospitals, is without a doubt one of the most powerful novels I have ever read. Resisting the comfortable stereotypes of the mentally ill, she treats all of the characters; doctors, nurses and patients, with the same amount of honesty and insight. Her gift for cadence and the English language is remarakable. An incredibly courageous and moving work.
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if only oprah could get her hands on this book! Millions would get a chance to know the wonder of Janet Frames' writing. Faces in the Water is one of my favorites. The feeling of being in a mental instution lingers for days after you've finished reading. This is one book I've kept to read again. .
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anything janet writes is going to be good, but i must say none of her books have moved me like this one has....she writes with razor in mitten to describe her own mental illness and the barbaric way hospitals go about "treating" it. her description of shock therapy is so dark and beautiful. she does an excellent job of bringing to the page something so other, one can hardly imagine it much less speak about it. bravo, janet!...
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