Towards Another Summer

by Janet Frame; Virago 224pp; £12.99
The great New Zealand writer Janet Frame - best known for her memoirs, including An Angel at My Table, which was made into a film by Jane Campion - died in 2004, said Hilary Mantel in the Guardian. This new novel, apparently considered too personal to publish during her lifetime, is based on a weekend visit she made to the house of a journalist in a northern English town, while she was living in London. Unlike many posthumously published books, Towards Another Summer is "no literary curiosity, but a deeply rewarding novel".

It may only be the story of "48 hours in a draughty house", said Rachel Cooke in the Observer, but "as an account of what it is like to be an overly sensitive and lonely young woman, it is as true as anything I have read in a very long time". The young heroine is all at sea in the world of her well-meaning hosts, with their meals and trips and chat. "She finds herself a fugitive, always trying to escape the curious glances of her hosts and the beady eyes of the children," gripped by an inability to communicate that is almost comic. She finds it practically impossible to say: "Yes, I do like cheese on toast," even if she rehearses the line beforehand.

"With absolute assurance, Frame renders the lost, uncertain figure, and considers perhaps the most profound questions a novel can ask," said Laura Thompson in the Daily Telegraph, "what a person actually is, what it means to live."

FIRST POSTED JULY 31, 2008