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About This Item
Christchurch, New Zealand: Pegasus, 1958. Second. Cloth. Good/Good. Janet Frame's first novel, Owls Do Cry draws on many details of her own life. Her childhood was shadowed by poverty, sickness, and accidental death, and shaped by the power of the spoken and written word. At twenty-one, she was institutionalized in a mental hospital and later saved from a threatened lobotomy only by her achievement as a writer. Owls Do Cry explores the life of the Withers family in a New Zealand town "halfway between the South Pole and the equator." Poverty and a reputation for strangeness exclude the Withers from the hollow conventions and artifacts of suburban life. They do not possess revolving clotheslines, walkie talkie dolls or uncomfortable chairs, yet the children's lives are rich in "wonder currency:" rhymes and rituals, play and dreams. Twenty years later, this currency is subsumed for each of them into vivid, haunted inner lives. Owls Do Cry lyrically evokes "the private and lonely night, with a room of its own but no window" within which the characters are caught. The parents are worn down by worry and love; the children grow into baffled, damaged adults. Each has taken hold of "the wrong magic and the wrong fairy tale." The special quality of this novel lies in its poetic, hallucinatory, perceptive voice, imbued with the surreal vision of childhood and madness. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.
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Details
- Bookseller
- The Last Word (NZ)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 000395
- Title
- Owls Do Cry
- Author
- Frame Janet
- Format/Binding
- Cloth
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Jacket Condition
- Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Second
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Pegasus
- Place of Publication
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Date Published
- 1958
- Bookseller catalogs
- Antiquarian and Collectable;
Terms of Sale
The Last Word
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives inaccurately or damaged. Prices are not set in stone - contact me if you want to haggle or submit a reasonable offer. Some larger and heavier books will incur extra postage - I will let you know when you order the book.
About the Seller
The Last Word
Biblio member since 2009
Wellington
About The Last Word
Dealer in good quality books. Especially Man Booker Prize winners - signed first editions, vintage childrens\\\' books and important New Zealand books such as those by Janet Frame. Prices are not set in stone - contact me if you want to haggle or submit a reasonable offer.
Glossary
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