A Mind Cast Out

Clair Wills reviewed The Edge of the Alphabet by Janet Frame for the New York Review of Books.

“The New Zealand novelist Janet Frame had a rather startling story to tell about the relationship between her work as a writer and her existence as a human being. Writing saved her life, she explained, and she meant it literally. In December 1952, at the age of twenty-eight, after spending more than seven years in and out of various psychiatric institutions—following a suicide attempt in 1945 and a hurried diagnosis of schizophrenia—she was institutionalized again and scheduled for a leukotomy, or prefrontal lobotomy. Her mother had signed the consent form. In anguish and fear Frame was counting down the days till the surgery when her short story collection The Lagoon won what was then New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award, the Hubert Church Memorial Prize.”

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