Owls Do Cry: A Novel

by Janet Frame

Ebook, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

823

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Counterpoint (2016), Edition: Reprint, 221 pages

Description

So the day promised fair, and the sea lay like a quilt with the waves tucked under, and the trees wavering like leafless water, cut to fit from a transparent block of blue air and frost. 'Owls do cry' tells the story of the Withers family: Francie, who is twelve and about to start work at the woollen mills, hard drudgery sweetened with the thrill of riding a bike to work; Toby, who would rather play at the dump than go to school, where the dark velvet cloak of epilepsy often wraps itself around him; Chicks, the youngest; and Daphne, whose rich poetic way of seeing the world leads to a heartbreaking life in institutions. Janet Frame writes of hardship, poverty and tragedy with beauty and a deep sensitivity. 'Owls do cry' is a poetic masterpiece.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member anna_battista

I loved this semi-autobiographical tale of Janet Frame's childhood in New Zealand, for the clear, flowing and sensitive style as well as for the description of life on the other side of the world and the characters. Reading this story of four brothers and sisters growing up, it is impossible not to

be touched by Daphne, the character closest to Frame herself, and the ordeal she goes through in a psychiatric hospital. Frame, understandably, offers an alternative, more sympathetic vision of mental patients, and subtly pleads for more acceptance and understanding from mainstream society in favour of people who don't quite fit in. Frame's observations on family life and siblings relationships (both in childhood and adulthood) also ring very true. All in all, a rich, original novel, by no means an easy read but a rewarding one.

Show Less

3 more

LibraryThing member -Cee-

Oh, the futility of life...where the "sane" partake of what appears to be the nectar of life and the "insane" are sadly dispossessed - but perhaps nearer to the truth.

This book follows a poverty stricken family in New Zealand but could have been anywhere on earth. All family members lead

individually distinct emotional lives and Janet Frame takes the reader on an exploration of the intimate musings of each. As crowded together physically and economically as they are, there is a vast distance separating them.

It occurred to me that perhaps you have to be a bit crazy to understand this book... I just might be...
I really liked this one! Very sad but insightful.

Show Less

LibraryThing member icolford

An unsettling and utterly original work of genius, Owls Do Cry heralded the arrival of Janet Frame on the international literary scene and kicked off a period of staggering creativity in which she would publish nine novels in fifteen years. Owls Do Cry chronicles the lives of the Withers siblings,

Daphne, Chicks (Teresa), Toby and Francie. Growing up in coastal Waimaru (based on Frame’s home town of Oamaru), the children are raised by their well-meaning, unsophisticated parents in a home with few luxuries and in a time and place where Toby’s epileptic seizures are considered shameful and frightening and a sign of weakness. The first part of the novel tells of their fascination with the local rubbish dump, where they often go to search for treasure, and ends with a tragic accident. Subsequent sections take place “twenty years after” and follow the three remaining Withers siblings as they suffer setbacks and struggle to remain connected and yet establish independent identities and lives of their own. Most powerful is the section on Daphne, who has been committed to a mental institution and regards her surroundings through a drugged and fragmented haze. The reality of these scenes is fluid and hard to nail down—hospital staff are monsters, a wall is a mountain—but it is in this section that Frame’s prose and narrative imagery achieve the vivid and poetic heights for which she was to become famous. One cannot help reading Daphne’s scenes through the prism of what we know of the author’s life: her own institutionalization and narrow escape from brain surgery as psychiatric therapy. Though there are flashes of humour, the prevailing tone of the novel is tragic, and yet one reaches the end with a sense that hope is not entirely lost. In 1957, Owls Do Cry appeared without literary antecedents, leaving critics of the time with virtually no points of comparison. Sixty years later it remains a deeply affecting work of startling originality. The courage of its author, one of the most daring stylists of twentieth-century English prose, is undeniable.

Show Less

LibraryThing member NurseBob

Floating somewhere between free verse and stream of consciousness, Janet Frame's beautifully evocative, semi-autobiographical novel traces the various fortunes of the dirt poor Withers family...most notably siblings Francie, Daphne, Toby, and Teresa (nicknamed "Chicks")...as they grow up and strive

to establish lives for themselves in the modern world of 1950's New Zealand. Frame uses words the way a painter uses oils (or a sculptor a chisel) giving her readers not so much a linear story but rather a carefully curated collage of memories, impressions, and emotional impacts. One marries well and turns to consumerism in order to fill an inner void; another tries to make their own way despite a severe handicap only to find Poverty traveling alongside them; and yet another struggles to understand the world through a mind crippled by madness. Humorous and heartbreaking in turn, "Owls Do Cry" is the closest I've come to an immersive reading experience in quite some time.

Show Less

Fewer