In the Memorial Room: A Novel

by Janet Frame

Overview

Harry Gill, a moderately successful writer of historical fiction, has been awarded the annual Watercress–Armstrong Fellowship—a ‘living memorial' to the poet, Margaret Rose Hurndell. He arrives in the small French village of Menton, where Hurndell once lived and worked, to write. But the Memorial Room is not suitable—it has no electricity or water. Hurndell never wrote here, though it is expected of Harry.



Janet Frame's previously unpublished novel draws on her own experiences in Menton, France as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow. It is a wonderful social satire, a send–up of the cult of the dead author, and—in the best tradition of Frame—a fascinating exploration of the complexity and the beauty of language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619022669
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	11/18/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	442 KB

About the Author

Janet Frame (1924 - 2004) was one of New Zealand's most distinguished writers. She is best known for An Angel at My Table, which the Sunday Times of London called "one of the great autobiographies written in the twentieth century," and inspired Jane Campion's internationally acclaimed film. Throughout her long career, Frame received a wide range of awards, including every literary prize for which she was eligible in New Zealand, honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

This short, funny and often beautifully written novel…provides an excellent occasion for remembering the weird wisdom and genuine talent of Janet Frame…In the Memorial Room is filled with terrifyingly beautiful reflections on how writing books (and even reading them) can feel like digging your own grave. It also serves as a sly warning to those of us who obsessively cherish the works of dead writers—even writers as good as Janet Frame. Watch out! The death you memorialize may well be your own.

The New York Times Book Review - Scott Bradfield

Praise for In the Memorial Room

"This short, funny and often beautifully written novel — completed in the early 1970s but just now being published — provides an excellent occasion for remembering the weird wisdom and genuine talent of Janet Frame."—Scott Bradfield, The New York Times, Sunday Book Review

"[T]his book is marvelous experimental fiction…Frame's sentences are marvels, winding like narrow alleys through hill towns: They open spectacular vistas…Brilliant."—Kirkus, Starred Review

"[T]he story is also a beautifully crafted artistic and philosophical creation that explores the nature of communication and exposes Frame's love of language…this is a terrific introduction to an original writer who deserves her own serious league of fans. Recommended for all fiction collections."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 2013-10-20
A strange, resonant, Nabokov-ian novel about the plight of Harry Gill, a New Zealand writer on a six-month fellowship in France, struggling to write his first imaginative fiction. Works by Frame (1924-2004), the New Zealand novelist and autobiographer, continue to appear. Never published during her lifetime, this book is marvelous experimental fiction. Up until now, Harry (his name comes from the title of a William Wordsworth poem) has written historical novels. Receiving the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, and admitting he is not funny or adventurous, he sets out to write a "comic novel in the picaresque tradition." In fact, he is so shy and compliant as to be almost anonymous. Arriving in Menton, expatriates besiege him; they want to possess the recipient of their little fellowship, created to honor a dead writer who worked in the town. The book Harry writes is this one, a journal about trying to find peace and quiet and time to write a book, a comedy of errors both physical and metaphysical. The local doctor Harry visits, afraid that he is going blind and, again, when he goes deaf, is Dr. Rumor. The good doctor opines that Harry's symptoms are a species of hysteria: He fears going blind because he's afraid he is invisible. The humor is bone-dry and crackling. Harry, observing his predicament: "One does not always quote fiction as a good example for life but, I told myself, I would never have let this happen in fiction--a man going blind who instead becomes deaf." Frame's sentences are marvels, winding like narrow alleys through hill towns: They open spectacular vistas. Brilliant.

Kirkus Reviews