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Faces in the Water
This novel depicts the confinement of the mad and the banishment and punishment of those whose only reaction to an insane world is to enter a realm of self-creation.
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Janet Frame
64 books473 followersThe fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become well known. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book (The Lagoon and Other Stories) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a planned lobotomy.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
January 15, 2017
I have been a reader for as long as I can remember, not going to say how many years that is, but it has only been in the last ten years or so that I started reading non fiction. I used to think that knowing an author's background was unnecessary, but after I now realize how much of an author is put into even the fictional books they write. None more so then in this novel. Knowing the background of this author in particular made this an even more heartbreaking read than the subject itself garnered.
In this novel a young woman, once a school teacher loses her bearings, her grasp on reality and finds herself in a mental institute. We meet the other women, the so called caregivers and the ineffective doctors. The routine, the punishments, the cruelty, the EST shock therapy which was so feared, the different wards, the cruelty of many of the staff, and the sense of fear and hopelessness many of the patients felt. She would be let out under the care of assisted, only to find a short time later in another institution. The end threat, a lobotomy, the last recourse.
The writing is so insightful. Every few pages I stopped to reread a passage, powerful, profound. As written to describe the feelings of this young woman,
"And the days passed, packing and piling themselves together like sheets of absorbent material, deadening the sound of our lives, even to ourselves, so that perhaps if a tomorrow ever came it would not hear us; its new days would bury us, in its own name; we would be like people entombed when the rescuers, walking about in the dark waving lanterns and calling to us, eventually give up because no one answers them; sometimes they dig and find the victims dead."
The hopelessness and anguish expressed so heartbreaking. A powerful, and absorbing read, semi autobiographical novel. Well worth reading.
In this novel a young woman, once a school teacher loses her bearings, her grasp on reality and finds herself in a mental institute. We meet the other women, the so called caregivers and the ineffective doctors. The routine, the punishments, the cruelty, the EST shock therapy which was so feared, the different wards, the cruelty of many of the staff, and the sense of fear and hopelessness many of the patients felt. She would be let out under the care of assisted, only to find a short time later in another institution. The end threat, a lobotomy, the last recourse.
The writing is so insightful. Every few pages I stopped to reread a passage, powerful, profound. As written to describe the feelings of this young woman,
"And the days passed, packing and piling themselves together like sheets of absorbent material, deadening the sound of our lives, even to ourselves, so that perhaps if a tomorrow ever came it would not hear us; its new days would bury us, in its own name; we would be like people entombed when the rescuers, walking about in the dark waving lanterns and calling to us, eventually give up because no one answers them; sometimes they dig and find the victims dead."
The hopelessness and anguish expressed so heartbreaking. A powerful, and absorbing read, semi autobiographical novel. Well worth reading.
March 20, 2022
For me to sit here and say that this book was a difficult read, would certainly be an understatement. This wasn't a happy themed book, and I knew what I was going into, even before I opened the book, but still, seeing those words written down, someones life experiences, really has had a notable effect on my thinking.
The book is written in memoir form, of Istina Mavet, who's experiences are very similar to Janet Frames own. She speaks of her time from when she was a teacher, during which time she attempted suicide by overdosing on aspirin, which then triggered a mental breakdown. This resulted in her being admitted to the New Zealand mental institutions, where she spent eight years of her life, moving from various institutions, and other wards.
I, myself, have worked in homes for individuals with various mental health needs, and even though the system is entirely different now to what it was, you never quite forget the individuals that you come into contact with. I once met a lady, that had suffered some terrible event in her life, had then lost her family, and ultimately, turned to drink. She lost her identity, she forgot how to take care of herself, until she became a danger to herself and was admitted into full time care. She was 40 years old.
From the very first page, the reader feels uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the sense that one is glad that they are not in that institution with Istina, as the descriptions of the setting are so in depth, it made my stomach churn with disbelief. The particular smells in the institutions are mentioned continuously, and the stale air in the day room, mixed with the stench of urine and faeces, made me feel somewhat claustrophobic. Frame gave the people in this book an identity, and faces to the names that we learn so much about. I noticed she was excellent at this. For instance;
"There was Tilly who lived and moved in a perpetually crouching position, who never spoke but ate voraciously, her eyes glittering with a secret fire … Where was the former Tilly, the wife and mother of three children? How can people vanish and still be in the flesh before you? What now immovable debris of sickness had fallen from the sky to blanket an ordinary human landscape and give it this everlasting winter season?"
This book is undoubtedly the best that I've read in a while, and even though it has ultimately chilled me to the bone, I feel it is important in the sense that everyone should read this, even if it does feel like there is a lead weight in your stomach after you finish.
The book is written in memoir form, of Istina Mavet, who's experiences are very similar to Janet Frames own. She speaks of her time from when she was a teacher, during which time she attempted suicide by overdosing on aspirin, which then triggered a mental breakdown. This resulted in her being admitted to the New Zealand mental institutions, where she spent eight years of her life, moving from various institutions, and other wards.
I, myself, have worked in homes for individuals with various mental health needs, and even though the system is entirely different now to what it was, you never quite forget the individuals that you come into contact with. I once met a lady, that had suffered some terrible event in her life, had then lost her family, and ultimately, turned to drink. She lost her identity, she forgot how to take care of herself, until she became a danger to herself and was admitted into full time care. She was 40 years old.
From the very first page, the reader feels uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the sense that one is glad that they are not in that institution with Istina, as the descriptions of the setting are so in depth, it made my stomach churn with disbelief. The particular smells in the institutions are mentioned continuously, and the stale air in the day room, mixed with the stench of urine and faeces, made me feel somewhat claustrophobic. Frame gave the people in this book an identity, and faces to the names that we learn so much about. I noticed she was excellent at this. For instance;
"There was Tilly who lived and moved in a perpetually crouching position, who never spoke but ate voraciously, her eyes glittering with a secret fire … Where was the former Tilly, the wife and mother of three children? How can people vanish and still be in the flesh before you? What now immovable debris of sickness had fallen from the sky to blanket an ordinary human landscape and give it this everlasting winter season?"
This book is undoubtedly the best that I've read in a while, and even though it has ultimately chilled me to the bone, I feel it is important in the sense that everyone should read this, even if it does feel like there is a lead weight in your stomach after you finish.
December 17, 2015
4.5/5
The author of this book was saved from a lobotomy by her first book winning a prestigious literary prize.
Now, tell me, what do you say to that? What do you focus on first? The 'lobotomy', perhaps, one of the most popularly conceived intersections between the unknown and the brutal, a 'how could we' combined with a 'the best medicine has to offer' during a certain period of time. The 'author', the oh, I know what this will be about now, I have her numbered down for my interval of reading depending on my mood and flavor of curiosity. Or perhaps the 'prestigious literary prize' in conjunction with both, for what does that say about the prize, the judges, fiction entire when writing literally saved a person's existence from systematic excision?
Those who say space is the last frontier haven't considered the contours of their skull in a biosociocultural context for nearly long enough.
What are your verbs? What are your definitions? What is your metaphorical ideology that powers you through this world and all its clusterfucks of health and sanity, out here in the open where you are considered human enough for freedom of movement and adequate clothing? Tell me, what has saved you from the walls, the clockwork, the nurses jittering about their wards and bear baiting the more entertaining specimens of insanity for a momentary break from boredom? Tell me, what is your reality, and how blessed are you that it happens to conform to the all too easily deconstructed into the void word, normality?
Fiction? Fiction. The author won a prestigious literary prize in the midst of her incarceration. The prefixes of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' to that are additional, optional, irrelevant. In this fiction, the character is saved at the moment of bypassing all authority, disobeying the rigidly brutal structure of mental 'health care', sacrificing all that had been taught her in the years of nurse and schedule and 'What she needs is...' for a single question of 'What is your opinion'?, asked of a passing doctor/deity normally hedged off for the good of both.
Janet Frame didn't get part of her brain cut out because her book became too famous.
Words. Just words.
The author of this book was saved from a lobotomy by her first book winning a prestigious literary prize.
Now, tell me, what do you say to that? What do you focus on first? The 'lobotomy', perhaps, one of the most popularly conceived intersections between the unknown and the brutal, a 'how could we' combined with a 'the best medicine has to offer' during a certain period of time. The 'author', the oh, I know what this will be about now, I have her numbered down for my interval of reading depending on my mood and flavor of curiosity. Or perhaps the 'prestigious literary prize' in conjunction with both, for what does that say about the prize, the judges, fiction entire when writing literally saved a person's existence from systematic excision?
Those who say space is the last frontier haven't considered the contours of their skull in a biosociocultural context for nearly long enough.
What are your verbs? What are your definitions? What is your metaphorical ideology that powers you through this world and all its clusterfucks of health and sanity, out here in the open where you are considered human enough for freedom of movement and adequate clothing? Tell me, what has saved you from the walls, the clockwork, the nurses jittering about their wards and bear baiting the more entertaining specimens of insanity for a momentary break from boredom? Tell me, what is your reality, and how blessed are you that it happens to conform to the all too easily deconstructed into the void word, normality?
Fiction? Fiction. The author won a prestigious literary prize in the midst of her incarceration. The prefixes of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' to that are additional, optional, irrelevant. In this fiction, the character is saved at the moment of bypassing all authority, disobeying the rigidly brutal structure of mental 'health care', sacrificing all that had been taught her in the years of nurse and schedule and 'What she needs is...' for a single question of 'What is your opinion'?, asked of a passing doctor/deity normally hedged off for the good of both.
"For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make man agree to his own destruction.What dark and sibilant passages of plashed neuron streaks, thrown forth from mind to matter on the force of the desire to mirror the psychological context with a construct of black and white, appealed to those judges of that 'prestigious literary prize'? What did it say about them, to have so strongly believed in the ravings of a madwoman? What political machinations of 'civilized' society favored the release of the author, rather than the shutting up of the approving audience? The rumors? The scandal? The entertainment value outweighing the threat posed by a person functioning along their own lines of metaphor? Where was the point that prose found its anchor and grew up and out into the 'real' world, changing fact based on the fiction, a list of sentences now to be found on a short biography heading an entry of literary works?
Janet Frame didn't get part of her brain cut out because her book became too famous.
Words. Just words.
He sees the land of meaning, and one path to it, and the so-called "normal" people traveling swiftly and in comfort to the land; he does not include the shipwrecked people who arrive by devious lonely routes, and the many who dwell in the land in the beginning.Tell me, what are your fundamental clear cut and contemporary expoundings on the theme of objectivity? Tell me, what is your hardcore blunt and straightforward rhapsodizing on the motif of truth? How do you use them, and how well? How do you mix and match into the forms of 'sanity'? And how much will you suffer for it?
October 17, 2012
Choose to be changed. - Rainer Maria Rilke
I don't know how old Istina is. There is a young woman in one of her two institutional traps that had been there since she was twelve. Old women die in their sleep, flesh and spirit rotting from the disease of there was no where else to put you. Istina's Aunt gives her a pink bag that symbolizes to her that she'll never leave. Somewhere to put all of the prized possessions she'll ever have. I was reminded of the lifers in the mental asylums from Charles Bronson's memoir. Eighty years in a box. It's a life cut off from the past and flat lining into a future of "You've been through this before". That's what the nurses tell Istina when she's exchanged for a darker ward. You've been to these kinds of places before. Dead man walking all the steps back and you lose. The teen prostitute accused of attempted of murder played by Reese Witherspoon in the film Freeway utters the stone cold truth that "Once you're in the system no one is ever going to believe you again". You've been here before. It's next door to where the "normal" patients reside on ward seven. It's okay if you don't end up on two. It's a stigma of there's no rose colored glasses to obstruct their different sun. There are shades of shit as there are shades of gray, gray, gray. They have a different axis on ward two. It leans to the side like a plant someone forgot to water and whisper words of love. I doubt her family remembered where in life she was (except for her kind Aunt who visits with nice things to eat and say). You've been here before could be the rest of your life. That's what made me the angriest when reading Janet Frame's autobiographical novel Faces in the Water. The system with its rules that make no sense. I don't understand why they want her to shovel shit without ever digging herself out. Istina would pray her own mind for recollections of the day before as if there was some kind of superstitious ritual in the abject fear that could protect her from the near daily electric shock treatment in her second institution Treecroft. Forget do as your told and keep your head down. The "you've been here before" stigma of moving patients from a "superior" ward to a "crazier" ward really pissed me off. Once they had decided you were crazy then anything you did was a layer of filth to avoid seeing you scrubbing their floors.
Although I was capable of what I think was "sensible" conversation there were few people to talk to and in approaching anyone it was necessary to adopt a similar mental disguise- like the soldiers who wear branches in their hats in order to harmonize with the surrounding vegetation and allay the suspicion of the enemy. But are not those the tactics that all people use when they try to emerge from themselves and engage in the perils of human communication?
I got angry a lot, though. The nurse that sets up one patient who desperately mourns "Love me, love me" to attack her, only to have the rest of the nurses take her down for bad behavior made me so angry that I cried. This kind of shit goes on every day. The mentally ill are fed enough drugs to "fix them" so they can stand trial and get moved from facility to another facility, just to pass the buck, and never given the help they need. It made me sad to my bones that Istina (and Frame herself) and no business being there in the first place. The "You've been in places like this before" made me so mad because how is she going to get past the fear and the shame to get better to live for herself if their criteria for "better" is some bull shit arbitrary rules like hopping to fast enough when some bitch ass nurse wants her floors scrubbed promptly enough? I was terrified with her when she can't remember if she did anything that would get her electric shock treatment that morning. I was heartbroken when she loses hope in herself because there's nothing better to expect than "You've been in places like this before" dirt. Damn, but that really made me mad. What was before, how old is she and was she ever young for all that they cared. The end of the book is freaking perfect. She's advised to go out in the world and live a normal life as if none of that had ever happened. And by what I have written in this document you will see, won't you, that I have obeyed her? What kind of world is it where that kind of shit just happened to people? I cried really hard when reading Faces in the Water. I couldn't help it. I'm so angry. I always ask this, it seems. I have come to see more and more that my hope is founded in someone's ability to look at someone else. Istina sees that the patients fill the hospital like that Bruce Lee water analogy. Become the fears, mummify in that airless tomb and collect flowers on your grave.... Well, I don't get it. Some of them did get out. Some of them had relatives to visit. Some, like Istina, have to go back because they don't match the rest of the world that I also don't get. What the hell was that? I always ask this, too. What was the "right" thing to do to avoid this or that. It pisses me off. I cried harder when it occurred to me that in the "real" world the cruel nurse would be looked upon as the normal one. Fuck that. The Bruce Lee water thing is a douche bag of piss. Fuck that. The patients fill it like the clothes their forgotten age bodies lie to die in. Istina sometimes sees something else, she prays for the sick patients to get better in the night. She feels responsible for the ones who cannot speak for themselves. She makes things worse for herself in ways that I will never understand. I always say this but Istina was alright by me because she thought about meeting the eyes of ward four after she has been given a temporary appeal on ward seven. She would think about those people enough to think about meeting their eyes. That meant a lot to me. My heart broke for her knowing that she was going through. My heart broke that I suspected those stupid nurses were aiming for her to break for them. There's a ward for that too. Maybe those unfortunate souls didn't know where they were. It had to be the worst to be so aware of all that was going on, to believe that you must have done something to get that electric shock treatment. There's a Nabokov quote on my goodreads profile about how how people would think the flights of fantasy that gave his life meaning were insanity. That's true of Janet Frame. I love her for taking others with her. I don't know what insane or sane is but I want to know about what gives life meaning. I couldn't stop crying. I had to keep reading so I could look in Istina's eyes too. She deserved that. Fuck those people who wouldn't care about her. I know, the cruelest in position of authority, the Sister Bridge, seems to Istina to take it out on her after she catches the nun unconsciously caring for the patients. Surprised out of her self, she goes out of her way to balance the scales on Istina. I thought it spoke better of Istina that she retained hope in this way than it did of the Sister Bridge. I despaired of society that a person can't be asked to make that effort to get over themselves to not treat someone else like shit. It's not hopeless, everyone isn't like that, but I can't help but take out of this that people SHOULD be asked to think about someone else as a fellow human being.
I seldom read my book yet it became more and more dilapidated physically, with pictures falling out and pages unleaving as if an unknown person were devoting time to studying it. This evidence of secret reading gave me a feeling of gratitude. It seemed as if the book understood how things were and agreed to be company for me and to breathe, even without my opening it, an overwhelming dignity of riches; but because, after all, the first passion of books is to be read, it had decided to read itself; which explained the gradual falling of pages.
I had neglected to mention the slightest sense of humor in my review of Frame's Towards Another Summer. I shouldn't do that to Frame again. Faces in the Water has humor too, for all that it is one of the saddest books I've read in a long time. The pleasures she takes in life are edged with a tongue in cheek self deprecation about her own willingness to indulge in small life pleasures. It's really sad if you stop to think that these pieces of chocolate pilfered from patients too ill to partake of their gifts of food stuffs. Oh, you should keep it for yourself as she takes another piece. It reads like her fantasy flights. Easily spooked, with no where to land and call for home. Laughter like singing if someone caught you when you hadn't wanted to be heard. It's a nice revenge to laugh about this on people who would tell you that you were crazy for any so-called bad moment you ever had. Even where they were, where everything you did could be wrong and cause for punishment, the women tried to dream through something. Istina has a "romance" with a fuddy duddy informant patient from the male side. I found her attempts to be funny about this stuff sad and moving. I thought it was important to mention that Frame writes about their life as if it is still a real one, for all that it is caught in someone's glass jar. Why wouldn't they choose what they felt bad about, what should be changed, like they could choose what was funny? I don't want to think about someone telling her what was a fantasy (I liked when she'd think about the doctor showing her pictures and asking her what she thought they meant, as if it'd be a real conversation). I still think it was what was her poetry. Don't change her. I suspect there's nothing you can do about that smell of the time that time forgot (I think it's called despair), Bruce Lee (r.i.p) and his water cup that's half empty or full depending on some bullshit greeting card says, not other than what Istina did of holding on anyway. I don't know how she did it (she almost didn't). That made me want to cry too. I had a hard time reading this book and I feel closed up once my tears were spilled on how to explain why. I think I would have been trapped on ward four. I would have looked for their eyes, but would I have been able to meet my own? I don't know. I don't want to cry about that. I want to hide. It's hard to admit that. I think it would be admitting something like that that would have landed me in Treecroft in a bed across from Istina's own. I don't know if I could look society in the eye if that happened. That's hard. Frame did and she's amazing, to me, for that.
I don't know how old Istina is. There is a young woman in one of her two institutional traps that had been there since she was twelve. Old women die in their sleep, flesh and spirit rotting from the disease of there was no where else to put you. Istina's Aunt gives her a pink bag that symbolizes to her that she'll never leave. Somewhere to put all of the prized possessions she'll ever have. I was reminded of the lifers in the mental asylums from Charles Bronson's memoir. Eighty years in a box. It's a life cut off from the past and flat lining into a future of "You've been through this before". That's what the nurses tell Istina when she's exchanged for a darker ward. You've been to these kinds of places before. Dead man walking all the steps back and you lose. The teen prostitute accused of attempted of murder played by Reese Witherspoon in the film Freeway utters the stone cold truth that "Once you're in the system no one is ever going to believe you again". You've been here before. It's next door to where the "normal" patients reside on ward seven. It's okay if you don't end up on two. It's a stigma of there's no rose colored glasses to obstruct their different sun. There are shades of shit as there are shades of gray, gray, gray. They have a different axis on ward two. It leans to the side like a plant someone forgot to water and whisper words of love. I doubt her family remembered where in life she was (except for her kind Aunt who visits with nice things to eat and say). You've been here before could be the rest of your life. That's what made me the angriest when reading Janet Frame's autobiographical novel Faces in the Water. The system with its rules that make no sense. I don't understand why they want her to shovel shit without ever digging herself out. Istina would pray her own mind for recollections of the day before as if there was some kind of superstitious ritual in the abject fear that could protect her from the near daily electric shock treatment in her second institution Treecroft. Forget do as your told and keep your head down. The "you've been here before" stigma of moving patients from a "superior" ward to a "crazier" ward really pissed me off. Once they had decided you were crazy then anything you did was a layer of filth to avoid seeing you scrubbing their floors.
Although I was capable of what I think was "sensible" conversation there were few people to talk to and in approaching anyone it was necessary to adopt a similar mental disguise- like the soldiers who wear branches in their hats in order to harmonize with the surrounding vegetation and allay the suspicion of the enemy. But are not those the tactics that all people use when they try to emerge from themselves and engage in the perils of human communication?
I got angry a lot, though. The nurse that sets up one patient who desperately mourns "Love me, love me" to attack her, only to have the rest of the nurses take her down for bad behavior made me so angry that I cried. This kind of shit goes on every day. The mentally ill are fed enough drugs to "fix them" so they can stand trial and get moved from facility to another facility, just to pass the buck, and never given the help they need. It made me sad to my bones that Istina (and Frame herself) and no business being there in the first place. The "You've been in places like this before" made me so mad because how is she going to get past the fear and the shame to get better to live for herself if their criteria for "better" is some bull shit arbitrary rules like hopping to fast enough when some bitch ass nurse wants her floors scrubbed promptly enough? I was terrified with her when she can't remember if she did anything that would get her electric shock treatment that morning. I was heartbroken when she loses hope in herself because there's nothing better to expect than "You've been in places like this before" dirt. Damn, but that really made me mad. What was before, how old is she and was she ever young for all that they cared. The end of the book is freaking perfect. She's advised to go out in the world and live a normal life as if none of that had ever happened. And by what I have written in this document you will see, won't you, that I have obeyed her? What kind of world is it where that kind of shit just happened to people? I cried really hard when reading Faces in the Water. I couldn't help it. I'm so angry. I always ask this, it seems. I have come to see more and more that my hope is founded in someone's ability to look at someone else. Istina sees that the patients fill the hospital like that Bruce Lee water analogy. Become the fears, mummify in that airless tomb and collect flowers on your grave.... Well, I don't get it. Some of them did get out. Some of them had relatives to visit. Some, like Istina, have to go back because they don't match the rest of the world that I also don't get. What the hell was that? I always ask this, too. What was the "right" thing to do to avoid this or that. It pisses me off. I cried harder when it occurred to me that in the "real" world the cruel nurse would be looked upon as the normal one. Fuck that. The Bruce Lee water thing is a douche bag of piss. Fuck that. The patients fill it like the clothes their forgotten age bodies lie to die in. Istina sometimes sees something else, she prays for the sick patients to get better in the night. She feels responsible for the ones who cannot speak for themselves. She makes things worse for herself in ways that I will never understand. I always say this but Istina was alright by me because she thought about meeting the eyes of ward four after she has been given a temporary appeal on ward seven. She would think about those people enough to think about meeting their eyes. That meant a lot to me. My heart broke for her knowing that she was going through. My heart broke that I suspected those stupid nurses were aiming for her to break for them. There's a ward for that too. Maybe those unfortunate souls didn't know where they were. It had to be the worst to be so aware of all that was going on, to believe that you must have done something to get that electric shock treatment. There's a Nabokov quote on my goodreads profile about how how people would think the flights of fantasy that gave his life meaning were insanity. That's true of Janet Frame. I love her for taking others with her. I don't know what insane or sane is but I want to know about what gives life meaning. I couldn't stop crying. I had to keep reading so I could look in Istina's eyes too. She deserved that. Fuck those people who wouldn't care about her. I know, the cruelest in position of authority, the Sister Bridge, seems to Istina to take it out on her after she catches the nun unconsciously caring for the patients. Surprised out of her self, she goes out of her way to balance the scales on Istina. I thought it spoke better of Istina that she retained hope in this way than it did of the Sister Bridge. I despaired of society that a person can't be asked to make that effort to get over themselves to not treat someone else like shit. It's not hopeless, everyone isn't like that, but I can't help but take out of this that people SHOULD be asked to think about someone else as a fellow human being.
I seldom read my book yet it became more and more dilapidated physically, with pictures falling out and pages unleaving as if an unknown person were devoting time to studying it. This evidence of secret reading gave me a feeling of gratitude. It seemed as if the book understood how things were and agreed to be company for me and to breathe, even without my opening it, an overwhelming dignity of riches; but because, after all, the first passion of books is to be read, it had decided to read itself; which explained the gradual falling of pages.
I had neglected to mention the slightest sense of humor in my review of Frame's Towards Another Summer. I shouldn't do that to Frame again. Faces in the Water has humor too, for all that it is one of the saddest books I've read in a long time. The pleasures she takes in life are edged with a tongue in cheek self deprecation about her own willingness to indulge in small life pleasures. It's really sad if you stop to think that these pieces of chocolate pilfered from patients too ill to partake of their gifts of food stuffs. Oh, you should keep it for yourself as she takes another piece. It reads like her fantasy flights. Easily spooked, with no where to land and call for home. Laughter like singing if someone caught you when you hadn't wanted to be heard. It's a nice revenge to laugh about this on people who would tell you that you were crazy for any so-called bad moment you ever had. Even where they were, where everything you did could be wrong and cause for punishment, the women tried to dream through something. Istina has a "romance" with a fuddy duddy informant patient from the male side. I found her attempts to be funny about this stuff sad and moving. I thought it was important to mention that Frame writes about their life as if it is still a real one, for all that it is caught in someone's glass jar. Why wouldn't they choose what they felt bad about, what should be changed, like they could choose what was funny? I don't want to think about someone telling her what was a fantasy (I liked when she'd think about the doctor showing her pictures and asking her what she thought they meant, as if it'd be a real conversation). I still think it was what was her poetry. Don't change her. I suspect there's nothing you can do about that smell of the time that time forgot (I think it's called despair), Bruce Lee (r.i.p) and his water cup that's half empty or full depending on some bullshit greeting card says, not other than what Istina did of holding on anyway. I don't know how she did it (she almost didn't). That made me want to cry too. I had a hard time reading this book and I feel closed up once my tears were spilled on how to explain why. I think I would have been trapped on ward four. I would have looked for their eyes, but would I have been able to meet my own? I don't know. I don't want to cry about that. I want to hide. It's hard to admit that. I think it would be admitting something like that that would have landed me in Treecroft in a bed across from Istina's own. I don't know if I could look society in the eye if that happened. That's hard. Frame did and she's amazing, to me, for that.
February 8, 2022
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Classic + Literary Fiction
Faces in the Water tackles mental illness. It is the story of Istina Mavet who is committed to a psychiatric hospital called Cliffhaven. It is about her surviving that place. Her interaction with doctors, nurses, and other patients. As readers, we have no idea about her life prior to being committed to this hospital. We just get a glimpse of her past life that she used to be a teacher and had lost her grip on reality.
This is the second novel for the author and to know that the author has gone through the same hardships as the main character in this novel is fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Janet Frame was hospitalized for being schizophrenic. The hospital officials were about to do a lobotomy for her but they stopped when they knew she won a literary award. The procedure was canceled and then she was released later.
The author must have included a lot of her own experience in this story. But we don’t know the degree that Janet represented herself in Istina. This book was difficult to read. One is because it keeps you in tension all the time as you have to go through the awful procedures these patients were going through. It will make you feel uncomfortable the least. Maybe disturbed also for knowing that mental institutions were using such kinds of therapy for the patients. The second reason is that the writing was tough. I don’t know why but my mind and focus kept drifting. I’m not sure if the subject of the writing was the reason for this or the writing itself. Overall, this was a good difficult read. I wouldn’t call it enjoyable because I don’t see anybody enjoying characters going through electroconvulsive therapy and other horrible procedures that were used at those times!
Genre: Classic + Literary Fiction
Faces in the Water tackles mental illness. It is the story of Istina Mavet who is committed to a psychiatric hospital called Cliffhaven. It is about her surviving that place. Her interaction with doctors, nurses, and other patients. As readers, we have no idea about her life prior to being committed to this hospital. We just get a glimpse of her past life that she used to be a teacher and had lost her grip on reality.
This is the second novel for the author and to know that the author has gone through the same hardships as the main character in this novel is fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Janet Frame was hospitalized for being schizophrenic. The hospital officials were about to do a lobotomy for her but they stopped when they knew she won a literary award. The procedure was canceled and then she was released later.
The author must have included a lot of her own experience in this story. But we don’t know the degree that Janet represented herself in Istina. This book was difficult to read. One is because it keeps you in tension all the time as you have to go through the awful procedures these patients were going through. It will make you feel uncomfortable the least. Maybe disturbed also for knowing that mental institutions were using such kinds of therapy for the patients. The second reason is that the writing was tough. I don’t know why but my mind and focus kept drifting. I’m not sure if the subject of the writing was the reason for this or the writing itself. Overall, this was a good difficult read. I wouldn’t call it enjoyable because I don’t see anybody enjoying characters going through electroconvulsive therapy and other horrible procedures that were used at those times!
August 1, 2024
74th book of 2024.
4.5. Janet Frame spent years in psychiatric hospital and treatment, and days before a scheduled lobotomy, her debut short story collection unexpectedly won a national literary prize. Faces in the Water draws on Frame’s early life and treatment. There are disturbing descriptions of electric shock therapy and life in a psychiatric ward. The book was published in 1961, so Frame’s own experiences are no doubt from even earlier than that, so it is hard not to imagine the primitive care they were given due to lack of understanding. The book is a shocking testament to that fact. The final line of the first paragraph on page 1 sets up the tone of the novel, borderline apocalyptic:
I could only really stomach a dozen or so pages in one sitting. Istina Mavet is a tricksy Nabokov-esque narrator; on one page we believe she isn’t ‘crazy’, that she has been wrongly institutionalised (at one point, after eavesdropping on some doctors, ‘And from that day it was understood that I did not remain at the sink listening to the Gods in conversation’), on the next, she describes simply how she sits down and pisses on the floor, or hurls herself at a glass window, or attacks a nurse. We are drawn into a complex and ominous inner world: which I think all of the best fiction offers us. Chapter 26 is immensely good. Almost every dozen pages I read, I was in awe, terrified, committing lines to memory and scoring page numbers.
And even when not examining Mavet’s crippled self and psyche, Frame’s prose on all accounts is so unbelievably skilful that I can not imagine why she is not discussed more. Several months ago, I had never heard of her or the novel at hand. Take this random description from the middle of a chapter,
Not a comfortable read at all, but so impressive in its style. The novel is, really, comprised of vignettes about the narrator, the different wards, ECT, the other patients, the doctors, the escape attempts, the deaths, the screaming, pissing, fighting, delusions and hallucinations. It reminded me very much of The Bell Jar at times, but it is far more graphic. Highly recommended.
4.5. Janet Frame spent years in psychiatric hospital and treatment, and days before a scheduled lobotomy, her debut short story collection unexpectedly won a national literary prize. Faces in the Water draws on Frame’s early life and treatment. There are disturbing descriptions of electric shock therapy and life in a psychiatric ward. The book was published in 1961, so Frame’s own experiences are no doubt from even earlier than that, so it is hard not to imagine the primitive care they were given due to lack of understanding. The book is a shocking testament to that fact. The final line of the first paragraph on page 1 sets up the tone of the novel, borderline apocalyptic:
The streets throng with people who panic, looking to the left and the right, covering the scissors, sucking poison from a wound they cannot find, judging their time from the sun’s position in the sky when the sun itself has melted and trickles down the ridges of darkness into the hollows of evaporated seas.
I could only really stomach a dozen or so pages in one sitting. Istina Mavet is a tricksy Nabokov-esque narrator; on one page we believe she isn’t ‘crazy’, that she has been wrongly institutionalised (at one point, after eavesdropping on some doctors, ‘And from that day it was understood that I did not remain at the sink listening to the Gods in conversation’), on the next, she describes simply how she sits down and pisses on the floor, or hurls herself at a glass window, or attacks a nurse. We are drawn into a complex and ominous inner world: which I think all of the best fiction offers us. Chapter 26 is immensely good. Almost every dozen pages I read, I was in awe, terrified, committing lines to memory and scoring page numbers.
And even when not examining Mavet’s crippled self and psyche, Frame’s prose on all accounts is so unbelievably skilful that I can not imagine why she is not discussed more. Several months ago, I had never heard of her or the novel at hand. Take this random description from the middle of a chapter,
It was autumn, with the trees in the town gardens turning gold and the mornings in chiffon mist and the cold sweat of dew clinging in chains to the grass blades. The derelict apples trees blighted and scabbed with lichen were shedding, with help from the blackbirds, their last caved-in rotten apples, and when I walked under the trees in the long damp grass, I squashed the fruit and ruined the houses of the tiny worms who had settled in for the season, webbing themselves close to the core, at the heart of the matter. All the dockseeds had ripened and fallen, and the stalks of the plants were steepled with milky white ‘spiders’ houses; …
Not a comfortable read at all, but so impressive in its style. The novel is, really, comprised of vignettes about the narrator, the different wards, ECT, the other patients, the doctors, the escape attempts, the deaths, the screaming, pissing, fighting, delusions and hallucinations. It reminded me very much of The Bell Jar at times, but it is far more graphic. Highly recommended.
And my ‘old self’? Having had warning of its approaching death will it have crept away like an animal to die in privacy? Or will it be spilled somewhere like an invisible stain? Or, discarded, will it lie in wait for me in the future, seeking revenge? What is the essence of it, that the thieves are like metre readers who unknowingly bear away a blank card, and furniture removers trustfully sweating at the weight of imaginary furniture?
March 15, 2022
Debería empezar esta reseña declarando la enorme curiosidad que he sentido siempre por los centros psiquiátricos. La salud mental ha sido siempre un tema tan tabú que poco sabemos sobre qué sucede dentro de estos lugares y lo más importante: cómo son esas personas que tanto hemos olvidado y apartado por horribles prejuicios sociales. Nos han hecho creer en locos, cuando tener una enfermedad mental no es sinónimo de locura, ni maldad, ni extrema peligrosidad. Gracias @trotalibros por traer una historia que ayuda a plantearse, conocer y reflexionar sobre un tema tan importante.
Este “testimonio novelado” de 1961 (Janet, al comienzo del escrito declara que no está basada en hechos reales, aunque ella misma pasó largos años en instituciones mentales y curiosamente lo que la salvó de ser sometida a una lobotomía fue resultar ganadora de un premio por una de sus novelas), supone una puerta abierta a conocer un poco más de lo que sucedía en estos lugares. Datos sobre las “prácticas novedosas” que utilizaban en los tratamientos que verdaderamente eran torturas.
«Rostros en el agua» es conocer un lugar atroz lleno de mujeres tratadas como animales, a las que dejan con mentes inutilizadas, llevándolas a una desesperación absoluta, siendo víctimas de burlas o engaños, acusadas de violentas y salvajes siendo un experimento de supuestos avances médicos para dejarlas muertas en vida. Todas ellas diferentes, con sus inquietudes, sus sueños, sus anhelos y sus temores pero todas ellas olvidadas, privadas de libertad y de derechos básicos.
Una crítica de los malos tratos recibidos, de la hipocresía de esos lugares donde todo aparentaba ser idílico y donde supuestamente querían ayudar a sanar cuando lo único que hacían era anular a personas diferentes e incomprendidas. Un grito de presión, de agobio, de dolor que lo único que busca es que sea escuchado por alguien. Una lectura maravillosa, interesante y muy dura (no nos engañemos: se lee con una presión en el pecho que no pasa una vez terminada) con una frase final escalofriante y como siempre, una nota de editor que emociona.
Este “testimonio novelado” de 1961 (Janet, al comienzo del escrito declara que no está basada en hechos reales, aunque ella misma pasó largos años en instituciones mentales y curiosamente lo que la salvó de ser sometida a una lobotomía fue resultar ganadora de un premio por una de sus novelas), supone una puerta abierta a conocer un poco más de lo que sucedía en estos lugares. Datos sobre las “prácticas novedosas” que utilizaban en los tratamientos que verdaderamente eran torturas.
«Rostros en el agua» es conocer un lugar atroz lleno de mujeres tratadas como animales, a las que dejan con mentes inutilizadas, llevándolas a una desesperación absoluta, siendo víctimas de burlas o engaños, acusadas de violentas y salvajes siendo un experimento de supuestos avances médicos para dejarlas muertas en vida. Todas ellas diferentes, con sus inquietudes, sus sueños, sus anhelos y sus temores pero todas ellas olvidadas, privadas de libertad y de derechos básicos.
Una crítica de los malos tratos recibidos, de la hipocresía de esos lugares donde todo aparentaba ser idílico y donde supuestamente querían ayudar a sanar cuando lo único que hacían era anular a personas diferentes e incomprendidas. Un grito de presión, de agobio, de dolor que lo único que busca es que sea escuchado por alguien. Una lectura maravillosa, interesante y muy dura (no nos engañemos: se lee con una presión en el pecho que no pasa una vez terminada) con una frase final escalofriante y como siempre, una nota de editor que emociona.
February 3, 2022
I've read a few books by Janet Frame now, both her fiction and the first part of the autobiography as well as recently re-watching the Jane Campion film - An Angel at My Table, 1990, so I've begun to have a sense of Frame as the writer and person.
Faces in the Water is fiction - or perhaps I can use the new term - auto-fiction, which I think means, a fiction based closely on the writer's life. And there are several questions which I cannot resolve - first of all the whole of Faces is written from the first-person perspective; this of course allows a deep insight into the feelings and experiences of our narrator but at the same time prohibits a corroboration; an alternative viewpoint. I cannot help asking - what were the circumstances that resulted in her ending up - not once but three times in the two different mental hospitals? She never actually says - why. She doesn't detail the process - it's a blurr. I can certainly understand how her mental state deteriorates once she is in the hospital because of the prohibitions, the lack of autonomy, the abuse and quite frankly the torture of electric shock treatments she received, especially in the first institute, Cliffhaven. Seacliff is the real name. But, I would have liked some external observation of her - how she appeared to say her family - a witness perhaps of the externals which forced action to be taken.
The reason I ask this question is because later in her autobiography - when she is visiting London, U.K., Frame consults a psychiatrist who confirms that she is not mentally ill, nor ever has been.
After three years of living in Ward Four and going dutifully for treatment on nearly every morning when it was required of me, and earning Mrs Pilling's respect by my enthusiastic polishing of the corridor and Mrs's Everett's good will by my (sometimes feigned) willingness to peel apples and polish the silver on a Friday, and the increasing disapproval of Matron Glass and Sister Honey by my tendency to panic at mealtimes, I was pronounced well enough to go home.
Part One ends with her being collected by her mother and their journey homewards on the train and then Part Two - Treecroft, begins thus:
So I went up North to a land of palm trees and mangroves like malignant growths in the mud-filled throats of the bays, and orange trees with their leaves accepting darkly and seriously, in their own house as it were, the unwarranted globular outbursts of winter flame: and the sky faultless and remote.
She stays with her sister, but finds herself left out. She says: "Have you ever been a spinster living in a small house with your sister and her husband and their first child?"
The next paragraph begins: "I did not know my own identity." (. . . ) and ends, "I was not a mosquito nor a criket, nor a bamboo tree, therefore I found myself, when it was full summer, lying in a gaily quilted bed in a spotless room called an observation dormitory in Ward Seven of Treecroft Mental Hospital, up north."
Her writing is beautiful - that paragraph where the oranges burst forth, in their own house - is poetic but also a reference to her mental "condition".
What I cannot fathom is the fact that she "agrees" to go back to a hospital - if like myself you have just read the shocking, horrific "treatments" she received in Cliffhaven - I personally would never agree to re-enter any form of mental hospital again - 'over my dead-body' as the saying goes. And the reader like Frame knows that those pretty - spotless rooms are very quickly replaced with Other Wards - ones with wooden boards, and metal roofs, or no windows, or isolation rooms with no food, etc. etc.
Where is that PROCESS by which she agrees to be taken bodily to another hospital? I can only surmise that she had no where else to go. That her agreement to re-enter boils down to a combination of factors with the one of Economics being predominant and then others factoring in too, for example her acceptance of this diagnosis of schizophrenia, and I suppose the pressure of the doctors, and family.
In Treecroft she is subjected to more E.S.T. treatment.
The book covers many aspects of Frame's experiences. Her descriptions of the doctors and nurses, the matron and sisters in charge - how many of them start out with sympathetic views towards mental patients but how this quickly deteriorates into bullying; brusque indifference is more than adequately explained in terms of numbers. How does one doctor split his time between 1000 mental patients - again Economics. Frame focuses in detail on a number of patients - Bertha a gifted pianist who is given an lobotomy - her mind now split into quarters; or Dame Mary-Margaret, a giant of a woman who bosses the other patients in Ward Two.
I both liked and felt frustrated as Frame herself must have been with the enclosed world of many of the patients - the ones who could communicate and the ones who couldn't. I felt forcefully, how it is an accepted norm to believe that communication is possible. And yet Frame delicately allows us to see the impossibilities of ever understanding the internal spaces of people who are, to use a clumsy external denotation - deranged.
Here is a good example of the struggle to treat the patients as people:
Sometimes one would surprise a human look on the face of Tilly or Lorna or the others but there was no way to capture it; one felt like an angler who discerns the ripple of a rainbow fish which will surely die if it stays in the foul water. How to trap it without hurting it? But the ripple of humanity may take the forms of protest, depression, exhilaration, violence; it is easier to stun the beautiful fish with a dose of electricity than to handle it with care and transfer it to a pool where it will survive. And it may take many hours and years angling for human identity, sitting in one's safe boat in the middle of the stagnant pool and trying not to panic when the longed-for ripple almost overturns the boat.
In the above passage Frame is referring to some of the medical staff who would have liked to have been able to offer genuine help, but Frame is also referring to herself. There are many occasions where she tries to protect her fellow patients from abuse or trauma by the staff; she feels a deep empathy for her fellow sufferers and yet at the same time - she needs all her wits and strength to hold herself together to survive in the "camps" of the mental wards. Frame mentions how 37 patients die in a fire. Or how punishments to control behaviour commonly result in the death or disappearance of patients.
There are places when sometimes I felt impatient - but in casting my eye back over and looking for the sections which stand out, I realise quite clearly that this story is much more of a memoir. There is a basic chronological structure parts 1, 2, and 3 referring to the three placements - but otherwise the structure is loose as if Frame is pulling from memory. So, there is a kind of organic blooming of information much more than any kind of linear narrative, which requires a little patience or at least understanding to follow.
My final comments. I completely loved the end sections where Frame has been reinstated in Ward Four on her gradual but definite way out, but she maintains her contact with her Ward Two inmates - or the seriously insane. She is delighted when they remember her, as only she is able to "communicate" with them. Frame describes two events, a Sports Day and the opening of a Bowling Green - and she describes the delight of the Ward Two patients, particularly in contrast with the Ward Four - who feel embarrassed to participate, who seem unable to enjoy or throw themselves into the delights of the celebration day.
[The Ward Four] These patients appeared dignified and bored; after the opening speech they had clapped lightly; they had not rushed forward in a starving mob when they saw the sandwiches and cakes appearing; some had even declined the bottle of fizz which was theirs by right . But there in one corner of the pavilion, Carol was exuberantly setting up a fizz exchange, a green for those who didn't like red, an orange for those who had been given a lemon drink. And now on the green the men were walking about testing the surface bowling the bowls; the atmosphere was relaxed; the crowd was leaving.
It's a long passage to quote whole but Frame throughout her novel has emphasized that fine line between the people inside and the people outside.
Faces in the Water is fiction - or perhaps I can use the new term - auto-fiction, which I think means, a fiction based closely on the writer's life. And there are several questions which I cannot resolve - first of all the whole of Faces is written from the first-person perspective; this of course allows a deep insight into the feelings and experiences of our narrator but at the same time prohibits a corroboration; an alternative viewpoint. I cannot help asking - what were the circumstances that resulted in her ending up - not once but three times in the two different mental hospitals? She never actually says - why. She doesn't detail the process - it's a blurr. I can certainly understand how her mental state deteriorates once she is in the hospital because of the prohibitions, the lack of autonomy, the abuse and quite frankly the torture of electric shock treatments she received, especially in the first institute, Cliffhaven. Seacliff is the real name. But, I would have liked some external observation of her - how she appeared to say her family - a witness perhaps of the externals which forced action to be taken.
The reason I ask this question is because later in her autobiography - when she is visiting London, U.K., Frame consults a psychiatrist who confirms that she is not mentally ill, nor ever has been.
After three years of living in Ward Four and going dutifully for treatment on nearly every morning when it was required of me, and earning Mrs Pilling's respect by my enthusiastic polishing of the corridor and Mrs's Everett's good will by my (sometimes feigned) willingness to peel apples and polish the silver on a Friday, and the increasing disapproval of Matron Glass and Sister Honey by my tendency to panic at mealtimes, I was pronounced well enough to go home.
Part One ends with her being collected by her mother and their journey homewards on the train and then Part Two - Treecroft, begins thus:
So I went up North to a land of palm trees and mangroves like malignant growths in the mud-filled throats of the bays, and orange trees with their leaves accepting darkly and seriously, in their own house as it were, the unwarranted globular outbursts of winter flame: and the sky faultless and remote.
She stays with her sister, but finds herself left out. She says: "Have you ever been a spinster living in a small house with your sister and her husband and their first child?"
The next paragraph begins: "I did not know my own identity." (. . . ) and ends, "I was not a mosquito nor a criket, nor a bamboo tree, therefore I found myself, when it was full summer, lying in a gaily quilted bed in a spotless room called an observation dormitory in Ward Seven of Treecroft Mental Hospital, up north."
Her writing is beautiful - that paragraph where the oranges burst forth, in their own house - is poetic but also a reference to her mental "condition".
What I cannot fathom is the fact that she "agrees" to go back to a hospital - if like myself you have just read the shocking, horrific "treatments" she received in Cliffhaven - I personally would never agree to re-enter any form of mental hospital again - 'over my dead-body' as the saying goes. And the reader like Frame knows that those pretty - spotless rooms are very quickly replaced with Other Wards - ones with wooden boards, and metal roofs, or no windows, or isolation rooms with no food, etc. etc.
Where is that PROCESS by which she agrees to be taken bodily to another hospital? I can only surmise that she had no where else to go. That her agreement to re-enter boils down to a combination of factors with the one of Economics being predominant and then others factoring in too, for example her acceptance of this diagnosis of schizophrenia, and I suppose the pressure of the doctors, and family.
In Treecroft she is subjected to more E.S.T. treatment.
The book covers many aspects of Frame's experiences. Her descriptions of the doctors and nurses, the matron and sisters in charge - how many of them start out with sympathetic views towards mental patients but how this quickly deteriorates into bullying; brusque indifference is more than adequately explained in terms of numbers. How does one doctor split his time between 1000 mental patients - again Economics. Frame focuses in detail on a number of patients - Bertha a gifted pianist who is given an lobotomy - her mind now split into quarters; or Dame Mary-Margaret, a giant of a woman who bosses the other patients in Ward Two.
I both liked and felt frustrated as Frame herself must have been with the enclosed world of many of the patients - the ones who could communicate and the ones who couldn't. I felt forcefully, how it is an accepted norm to believe that communication is possible. And yet Frame delicately allows us to see the impossibilities of ever understanding the internal spaces of people who are, to use a clumsy external denotation - deranged.
Here is a good example of the struggle to treat the patients as people:
Sometimes one would surprise a human look on the face of Tilly or Lorna or the others but there was no way to capture it; one felt like an angler who discerns the ripple of a rainbow fish which will surely die if it stays in the foul water. How to trap it without hurting it? But the ripple of humanity may take the forms of protest, depression, exhilaration, violence; it is easier to stun the beautiful fish with a dose of electricity than to handle it with care and transfer it to a pool where it will survive. And it may take many hours and years angling for human identity, sitting in one's safe boat in the middle of the stagnant pool and trying not to panic when the longed-for ripple almost overturns the boat.
In the above passage Frame is referring to some of the medical staff who would have liked to have been able to offer genuine help, but Frame is also referring to herself. There are many occasions where she tries to protect her fellow patients from abuse or trauma by the staff; she feels a deep empathy for her fellow sufferers and yet at the same time - she needs all her wits and strength to hold herself together to survive in the "camps" of the mental wards. Frame mentions how 37 patients die in a fire. Or how punishments to control behaviour commonly result in the death or disappearance of patients.
There are places when sometimes I felt impatient - but in casting my eye back over and looking for the sections which stand out, I realise quite clearly that this story is much more of a memoir. There is a basic chronological structure parts 1, 2, and 3 referring to the three placements - but otherwise the structure is loose as if Frame is pulling from memory. So, there is a kind of organic blooming of information much more than any kind of linear narrative, which requires a little patience or at least understanding to follow.
My final comments. I completely loved the end sections where Frame has been reinstated in Ward Four on her gradual but definite way out, but she maintains her contact with her Ward Two inmates - or the seriously insane. She is delighted when they remember her, as only she is able to "communicate" with them. Frame describes two events, a Sports Day and the opening of a Bowling Green - and she describes the delight of the Ward Two patients, particularly in contrast with the Ward Four - who feel embarrassed to participate, who seem unable to enjoy or throw themselves into the delights of the celebration day.
[The Ward Four] These patients appeared dignified and bored; after the opening speech they had clapped lightly; they had not rushed forward in a starving mob when they saw the sandwiches and cakes appearing; some had even declined the bottle of fizz which was theirs by right . But there in one corner of the pavilion, Carol was exuberantly setting up a fizz exchange, a green for those who didn't like red, an orange for those who had been given a lemon drink. And now on the green the men were walking about testing the surface bowling the bowls; the atmosphere was relaxed; the crowd was leaving.
It's a long passage to quote whole but Frame throughout her novel has emphasized that fine line between the people inside and the people outside.
March 28, 2023
FACES IN THE WATER (1961) is a shocking novel about mental illness which draws on Janet Frame's own early life. It takes place inside two New Zealand mental institutions.
The protagonist, Istina Mavet, spends 10 years of her life in these institutions where abusive practices, so frequent in the psychiatry of the time, destroy the lives and souls of the patients. In fact, Istina describes one of these institutions as a slaughterhouse.
As a basic treatment, patients received electroconvulsive therapy: electricity was passed through the patient's brain to induce an epileptic fit. No anesthetics were used before the shock treatment: "Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime".
It is now generally accepted that this controversial procedure, which apparently is still used today, leads to memory loss, severe and permanent in some cases. Janet Frame said she underwent about two hundred sessions of electroconvulsive therapy.
There were worse things that could happen to patients, though. Insulin coma therapy was also tried on patients. When all treatments failed, then a lobotomy was "suggested" as the only treatment that could give patients hope to return "home".
Lobotomy (also known as leucotomy) is a surgical procedure which consists of severing the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain structures. It is an irreversible procedure. The aim of a lobotomy is to induce passivity, to transform patients into meek zombies.
We don't know why Istina was institutionalized; we know very little about her past. It doesn't really matter, I think. Nobody should be subjected to overt sadism and to humiliating practices that make people mad, not sane. We do know, however, that Janet Frame suffered an emotional breakdown when she left home and went to train as a teacher. She was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. She spent eight years held in psychiatric hospitals and would have been subjected to a lobotomy if news had not arrived that she was a published writer and had won a national prize. They realized she was not crazy after all and released her.
This novel is based on Frame's own experience but it is a work of fiction. Her own doctor suggested that she write about her experiences to help her free herself from them. The prose is experimental and playful most of the time for how can you use proper syntax to describe a psyche which is disintegrating? FACES IN THE WATER is a chilling and compassionate novel about the inbuilt violence of mental institutions.
The protagonist, Istina Mavet, spends 10 years of her life in these institutions where abusive practices, so frequent in the psychiatry of the time, destroy the lives and souls of the patients. In fact, Istina describes one of these institutions as a slaughterhouse.
As a basic treatment, patients received electroconvulsive therapy: electricity was passed through the patient's brain to induce an epileptic fit. No anesthetics were used before the shock treatment: "Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime".
It is now generally accepted that this controversial procedure, which apparently is still used today, leads to memory loss, severe and permanent in some cases. Janet Frame said she underwent about two hundred sessions of electroconvulsive therapy.
There were worse things that could happen to patients, though. Insulin coma therapy was also tried on patients. When all treatments failed, then a lobotomy was "suggested" as the only treatment that could give patients hope to return "home".
Lobotomy (also known as leucotomy) is a surgical procedure which consists of severing the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain structures. It is an irreversible procedure. The aim of a lobotomy is to induce passivity, to transform patients into meek zombies.
We don't know why Istina was institutionalized; we know very little about her past. It doesn't really matter, I think. Nobody should be subjected to overt sadism and to humiliating practices that make people mad, not sane. We do know, however, that Janet Frame suffered an emotional breakdown when she left home and went to train as a teacher. She was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. She spent eight years held in psychiatric hospitals and would have been subjected to a lobotomy if news had not arrived that she was a published writer and had won a national prize. They realized she was not crazy after all and released her.
This novel is based on Frame's own experience but it is a work of fiction. Her own doctor suggested that she write about her experiences to help her free herself from them. The prose is experimental and playful most of the time for how can you use proper syntax to describe a psyche which is disintegrating? FACES IN THE WATER is a chilling and compassionate novel about the inbuilt violence of mental institutions.
December 8, 2015
While this is "fiction," the author herself spent time in mental institutions in the same time frame as her main character in Faces in the Water. I have her three-volume autobiography on the shelf, so hopefully I will have more insight soon.
This was discussed on Episode 045 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
"I did not know my own identity. I was burgled of body and hung in the sky like a woman of straw."This book is impossible to put down. The writing is poetic, graphic and nightmarish all at once, with detailed descriptions of mental institutions where people are managed but not treated as very human, during a time where electric shock therapy and insulin shock therapy were standard forms of control, and lobotomies were used for patients who resisted shock therapy. The main character spends a lot of time fearing a lobotomy. Her treatments are out of her control, actions decided on by doctors, nurses, and parents signing off on decisions from afar.
"I tried to forget my still-growing disquiet and dread and the haunting smell of the other ward... that the E.S.T. which happened three times a week, and the succession of screams heard as the machine advanced along the corridor, were a nightmare that one suffered for one's own 'good.' 'For your own good' is a persuasive argument that will eventually make man agree to his own destruction."I should mention that I read this as part of my New Zealand November during my 2015 year of reading books from Oceania. At times Janet Frame writes beautifully about New Zealand - the disparity in landscape between the north and south, and how about these disturbing metaphors while describing spring from the point of view of the "insane":
-summer is impatient to striptease the skyAt one point, Janet Frame describes this protagonist as noticing too much, of seeing too many details, and the world not knowing what to do with that. It is impossible not to picture her in those feelings of overwhelmed sensation, writing the words within the book and living out her own life as a very sensory writer.
-purple flowers like intimate folds of bruised flesh
-slate-cold sea with its scratches
-people danced with good reason
This was discussed on Episode 045 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
January 6, 2012
Janet Frame is clearly a writer who closely follows the advice of Mark Twain -- "write what you know." And what she intimately knows is the mental splitting from reality, electroshock treatments, psychiatric institutions and those who fill them. Following a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt during her early years as a teacher, Ms. Frame was committed to the New Zealand hospital system where she remained for the next eight years shuttling from ward to ward and institution to institution.
Faces in the Water is written as a memoir and tells the story of a young woman, Istina Mavet, whose experiences closely mirror Janet Frames own.
I will write about the season of peril. I was put in a hospital because a great gap opened in the ice flow between myself and the other people…"
The book both distances the reader and draws them in. Distances because we are forced into a place so uncomfortable and shocking that there becomes a need to put some space between our world and Istina's -- it's comforting to believe that her tale is one of exception. It isn't. There are many floating alone on ice drifts and what this book accomplishes exceedingly well is the personalizing and clear "faces" that Frame attaches to her characters that stops them from being so foreign and instead humanizes these frail lives.
There was Tilly who lived and moved in a perpetually crouching position, who never spoke but ate voraciously, her eyes glittering with a secret fire … Where was the former Tilly, the wife and mother of three children? How can people vanish and still be in the flesh before you? What now immovable debris of sickness had fallen from the sky to blanket an ordinary human landscape and give it this everlasting winter season?"
Questions that I asked myself throughout the entire reading, little by little closing the gap in my lack of understanding. Beautiful poetic writing. 4.5
Faces in the Water is written as a memoir and tells the story of a young woman, Istina Mavet, whose experiences closely mirror Janet Frames own.
I will write about the season of peril. I was put in a hospital because a great gap opened in the ice flow between myself and the other people…"
The book both distances the reader and draws them in. Distances because we are forced into a place so uncomfortable and shocking that there becomes a need to put some space between our world and Istina's -- it's comforting to believe that her tale is one of exception. It isn't. There are many floating alone on ice drifts and what this book accomplishes exceedingly well is the personalizing and clear "faces" that Frame attaches to her characters that stops them from being so foreign and instead humanizes these frail lives.
There was Tilly who lived and moved in a perpetually crouching position, who never spoke but ate voraciously, her eyes glittering with a secret fire … Where was the former Tilly, the wife and mother of three children? How can people vanish and still be in the flesh before you? What now immovable debris of sickness had fallen from the sky to blanket an ordinary human landscape and give it this everlasting winter season?"
Questions that I asked myself throughout the entire reading, little by little closing the gap in my lack of understanding. Beautiful poetic writing. 4.5
January 12, 2020
O poveri sventurati ignudi, dovunque voi siate,
che soffrite i colpi di questo uragano impietoso!
come potranno le vostre teste allo scoperto e i vostri fianchi malnutriti,
e i vostri stracci che son tutti buchi e finestre
difendervi da una stagione come questa?
[W. Shakespeare, Re Lear]
Janet Frame affermò che in “Volti nell’acqua “aveva ammorbidito la verità.
La sua paura era, infatti, quella di non essere creduta.
Chiuso il libro questa affermazione colpisce perché lo smarrimento della protagonista, da un lato, e la discesa negli inferi degli istituti psichiatrici, dall'altro sono un tale pugno allo stomaco da far apparire impossibile l'esistenza di una realtà ancora più tragica.
D’altro canto il nome che l’autrice sceglie per la protagonista – Istina Mavet- è carico di lampanti significati.
Come Hilary Mantel ci indica nella prefazione, «Istina significa “verità” in serbocroato, e Mavet significa “morte” in ebraico».
Questa dunque è la storia del luogo dove morte e verità s'incrociano.
”Hanno detto che dobbiamo essere ligi alla Sicurezza, perché è quella la Croce Rossa che ci fornirà pomata e bende per le ferite e allontanerà le idee estranee le perline di vetro della fantasia le forcine contorte dell’irrazionale appuntate nella nostra mente”
Fin dalle prime righe, “Volti nell’acqua “, si preannuncia con uno stile poetico che si destreggia abilmente con immagini e metafore.
Ci si trova da subito catapultati in una dimensione che confina tra una dolorosa realtà ed il bisogno di costruire un' impalcatura cui aggrapparsi per non cedere del tutto.
"...quando i pidocchi s’insinuano nella mente come enigmi?"
La storia comincia con Istina Mavet già ricoverata.
Non sappiamo cosa sia successo ma ne palpiamo l’angoscia che ad ondate la travolge.
Da subito capiamo che qualcosa non va: chi dovrebbe prendersi cura delle fragilità si pone, invece, come censore sordo e cieco.
Questo atteggiamento è un crescendo nella storia di Istina.
Infermiere che deridono e puniscono calcificando l’angoscia dell’elettroshock e la mostruosa ventilata possibilità di essere sottoposti ad una lobotomia e quindi entrare e manipolare un cervello con l’intento di modellare una personalità socialmente accettabile.
Chi ha letto “Un angelo alla mia tavola” sa che queste furono esperienze che Janet Frame visse realmente negli otto anni in cui fu dichiarata schizofrenica, ricoverata, sottoposto a d un numero considerevole di elettroshock (circa 200!!!) e ad un passo dall'essere lobotomizzata.
“Per il tuo bene” è un argomento persuasivo che alla fine induce l’uomo ad accettare la propria distruzione
Le donne che popolano questo romanzo sono assieme ad Istina svuotate della loro umanità: burattini che devono muoversi a comando.
Un gregge di voci inascoltate, forzato a stare in uno stretto sentiero che presto appare come un’inesorabile discesa verso il luogo senza ritorno, dove stanno “gli incurabili”.
E poi ci sono gli altri, quelli fuori: famigliari, amici, figure che si ricordano in immagini annebbiate. Sono coloro che vivono la vergogna e la costante paura di un ingestibile ritorno a casa.
Una storia, insomma disperata, a cui Frame ha regalato la magia di parole ed immagini che ci aiutano ad attraversare ciò che non vorremmo vedere e sentire...
” Noi tutti vediamo le facce nell’acqua. Soffochiamo il loro ricordo, perfino la fede nella loro realtà, e diventiamo tranquilli abitanti del mondo; oppure non riusciamo né a dimenticare né ad aiutare. A volte per un intreccio di circostanze o un sogno o un gioco sinistro di luci, vediamo la nostra stessa faccia.”
che soffrite i colpi di questo uragano impietoso!
come potranno le vostre teste allo scoperto e i vostri fianchi malnutriti,
e i vostri stracci che son tutti buchi e finestre
difendervi da una stagione come questa?
[W. Shakespeare, Re Lear]
Janet Frame affermò che in “Volti nell’acqua “aveva ammorbidito la verità.
La sua paura era, infatti, quella di non essere creduta.
Chiuso il libro questa affermazione colpisce perché lo smarrimento della protagonista, da un lato, e la discesa negli inferi degli istituti psichiatrici, dall'altro sono un tale pugno allo stomaco da far apparire impossibile l'esistenza di una realtà ancora più tragica.
D’altro canto il nome che l’autrice sceglie per la protagonista – Istina Mavet- è carico di lampanti significati.
Come Hilary Mantel ci indica nella prefazione, «Istina significa “verità” in serbocroato, e Mavet significa “morte” in ebraico».
Questa dunque è la storia del luogo dove morte e verità s'incrociano.
”Hanno detto che dobbiamo essere ligi alla Sicurezza, perché è quella la Croce Rossa che ci fornirà pomata e bende per le ferite e allontanerà le idee estranee le perline di vetro della fantasia le forcine contorte dell’irrazionale appuntate nella nostra mente”
Fin dalle prime righe, “Volti nell’acqua “, si preannuncia con uno stile poetico che si destreggia abilmente con immagini e metafore.
Ci si trova da subito catapultati in una dimensione che confina tra una dolorosa realtà ed il bisogno di costruire un' impalcatura cui aggrapparsi per non cedere del tutto.
"...quando i pidocchi s’insinuano nella mente come enigmi?"
La storia comincia con Istina Mavet già ricoverata.
Non sappiamo cosa sia successo ma ne palpiamo l’angoscia che ad ondate la travolge.
Da subito capiamo che qualcosa non va: chi dovrebbe prendersi cura delle fragilità si pone, invece, come censore sordo e cieco.
Questo atteggiamento è un crescendo nella storia di Istina.
Infermiere che deridono e puniscono calcificando l’angoscia dell’elettroshock e la mostruosa ventilata possibilità di essere sottoposti ad una lobotomia e quindi entrare e manipolare un cervello con l’intento di modellare una personalità socialmente accettabile.
Chi ha letto “Un angelo alla mia tavola” sa che queste furono esperienze che Janet Frame visse realmente negli otto anni in cui fu dichiarata schizofrenica, ricoverata, sottoposto a d un numero considerevole di elettroshock (circa 200!!!) e ad un passo dall'essere lobotomizzata.
“Per il tuo bene” è un argomento persuasivo che alla fine induce l’uomo ad accettare la propria distruzione
Le donne che popolano questo romanzo sono assieme ad Istina svuotate della loro umanità: burattini che devono muoversi a comando.
Un gregge di voci inascoltate, forzato a stare in uno stretto sentiero che presto appare come un’inesorabile discesa verso il luogo senza ritorno, dove stanno “gli incurabili”.
E poi ci sono gli altri, quelli fuori: famigliari, amici, figure che si ricordano in immagini annebbiate. Sono coloro che vivono la vergogna e la costante paura di un ingestibile ritorno a casa.
Una storia, insomma disperata, a cui Frame ha regalato la magia di parole ed immagini che ci aiutano ad attraversare ciò che non vorremmo vedere e sentire...
” Noi tutti vediamo le facce nell’acqua. Soffochiamo il loro ricordo, perfino la fede nella loro realtà, e diventiamo tranquilli abitanti del mondo; oppure non riusciamo né a dimenticare né ad aiutare. A volte per un intreccio di circostanze o un sogno o un gioco sinistro di luci, vediamo la nostra stessa faccia.”
February 11, 2017
I know that I tend to feel too acutely, particularly where books--and especially great books--are concerned. These last couple of weeks I've been feeling frightened, lonely, alienated and depressed. At first I assumed it was coincidence--a chemical downturn co-incidentally happening as I read this desperate and beautiful novel of mental illness and the torture of what passed, in 1950's New Zealand, for its cure. But it's more likely that the sheer power and intimacy of this novel pulled me into its mindset so wholly that I carried it around with me like a lead weight for the couple of weeks it took me to read.
That might sound like a warning or the preface to a negative review, but to me it's an enormous compliment to Janet Frame's artistry. So few works of art penetrate the viewer's critical armor and really dig into our psyches. Faces in the Water is one of those rare works, unforgettable, harrowing, so honest and naked we cannot deny the reality it creates for us, the empathy it squeezes from us. I know of no higher praise of a work of art. And I can say very little, intellectually, about why or how it borrowed so deeply into me.
I suppose I could note its pacing. The author in me was constantly searching, while I read, for some sort of architectural structure that explained the novel's great power but--again to to the novel's credit--it hardly seems to be there. And yet a particular pacing of harrowing experiences, reflections, and observations pushes the narrative forward in what feels like a real rather than structured, paced, or artificially constructed artistic play-world. It's easy, then, to say, that Frame is merely writing from her actual experiences and that the novel is great because she had a particularly harrowing life experience and then just wrote about it honestly and yet, as a writer, I know that that's impossible. Our lives almost never fall together into chronological order in forms that work in a narrative. Autobiography is almost harder than fiction to pace because one has to transpose or translate real time into narrative time. A wholly invented plot, constructed already around the necessities of an artistic form are far easier to pace--and yet, this novel had no classic, time tested and true narrative arc. It's wonder is how beautifully it falls into place as if it were the only reality possible, mirroring perfectly the horror of the mental illness it describes--to know what you should do but to be unable to do it. Perhaps, then, the novel's real power lies in its sublime prose, detailed observations, vivid similes, in its great wisdom--all forces powerless throughout to heal the distance between the narrator and the world and people around her, between perception and act, leaving our narrator so powerless and unable to help those who--at least nominally--wanted to help her. The tension and tragedy are almost too much to take.
That might sound like a warning or the preface to a negative review, but to me it's an enormous compliment to Janet Frame's artistry. So few works of art penetrate the viewer's critical armor and really dig into our psyches. Faces in the Water is one of those rare works, unforgettable, harrowing, so honest and naked we cannot deny the reality it creates for us, the empathy it squeezes from us. I know of no higher praise of a work of art. And I can say very little, intellectually, about why or how it borrowed so deeply into me.
I suppose I could note its pacing. The author in me was constantly searching, while I read, for some sort of architectural structure that explained the novel's great power but--again to to the novel's credit--it hardly seems to be there. And yet a particular pacing of harrowing experiences, reflections, and observations pushes the narrative forward in what feels like a real rather than structured, paced, or artificially constructed artistic play-world. It's easy, then, to say, that Frame is merely writing from her actual experiences and that the novel is great because she had a particularly harrowing life experience and then just wrote about it honestly and yet, as a writer, I know that that's impossible. Our lives almost never fall together into chronological order in forms that work in a narrative. Autobiography is almost harder than fiction to pace because one has to transpose or translate real time into narrative time. A wholly invented plot, constructed already around the necessities of an artistic form are far easier to pace--and yet, this novel had no classic, time tested and true narrative arc. It's wonder is how beautifully it falls into place as if it were the only reality possible, mirroring perfectly the horror of the mental illness it describes--to know what you should do but to be unable to do it. Perhaps, then, the novel's real power lies in its sublime prose, detailed observations, vivid similes, in its great wisdom--all forces powerless throughout to heal the distance between the narrator and the world and people around her, between perception and act, leaving our narrator so powerless and unable to help those who--at least nominally--wanted to help her. The tension and tragedy are almost too much to take.
May 14, 2023
“Rostros en el agua” nos traslada al mundo de los pabellones psiquiátricos de Nueva Zelanda a través de una narración documental en primera persona apretada y estructurada. Cualquier lector creería que el personaje principal y narradora de la historia, Istina, es una mosca en la pared que observa los tejemanejes de su entorno, pero eso cambiará rápidamente a medida que vuelve a la realidad cuando algunos de los otros personajes entran en juego. Se trata de un relato profundamente personal de una narradora claramente confiable pero intensamente perturbada y aislada.
El título, “Rostros en el agua” proviene de un comentario silencioso sobre estar fuera del cuerpo y mirar hacia abajo a su propio rostro bajo el agua, y sentir que podría ser cualquier rostro, como una metáfora de que ya no se reconoce a sí mismo o incluso a su propia humanidad. Este tema parece resonar a partir de la distinción de los “pacientes mentales” del resto de nosotros, las “personas”, con Istina convenciéndose lentamente de que ya no es humana, ya que su psique es efectivamente erosionada por los abrasivos entornos de la sala psicológica típica. Incluso si no fuera por los tratamientos atroces y deshumanizantes, esta historia revela que el entorno de un hospital psiquiátrico y la actitud hacia aquellos que padecen una enfermedad mental invariablemente resultará en un despojo de todo lo que es esencial para la humanidad.
El libro está tan maravillosamente elaborado, y la distancia psicológica y la destreza en la observación de la narradora son tan sinceras que es una maravilla para la vista. Nos vemos obligados a entrar en un lugar tan incómodo e impactante que urge la necesidad de poner un espacio entre nuestro mundo y el de Istina. Hay muchos que flotan solos en montones de hielo y lo que este libro logra muy bien es la personalización y los "rostros" claros que Frame asigna a sus personajes que evitan que sean tan extraños y, en cambio, humaniza estas frágiles vidas.
El estilo de narración de la corriente de la conciencia, así como el uso de una prosa fragmentada y recuerdos fracturados, permiten que la historia se manifieste en todo su horror. La novela en sí es impresionante y contundente, y no se puede leer a la ligera o sin la dedicación del lector. “Rostros en el agua” es innegablemente una lectura intensa, y leerla es, en algunos puntos, decididamente agotador, pero es de esos libros que sabes que realmente deberías leer el catálogo completo del autor tan pronto como te sea posible.
El título, “Rostros en el agua” proviene de un comentario silencioso sobre estar fuera del cuerpo y mirar hacia abajo a su propio rostro bajo el agua, y sentir que podría ser cualquier rostro, como una metáfora de que ya no se reconoce a sí mismo o incluso a su propia humanidad. Este tema parece resonar a partir de la distinción de los “pacientes mentales” del resto de nosotros, las “personas”, con Istina convenciéndose lentamente de que ya no es humana, ya que su psique es efectivamente erosionada por los abrasivos entornos de la sala psicológica típica. Incluso si no fuera por los tratamientos atroces y deshumanizantes, esta historia revela que el entorno de un hospital psiquiátrico y la actitud hacia aquellos que padecen una enfermedad mental invariablemente resultará en un despojo de todo lo que es esencial para la humanidad.
El libro está tan maravillosamente elaborado, y la distancia psicológica y la destreza en la observación de la narradora son tan sinceras que es una maravilla para la vista. Nos vemos obligados a entrar en un lugar tan incómodo e impactante que urge la necesidad de poner un espacio entre nuestro mundo y el de Istina. Hay muchos que flotan solos en montones de hielo y lo que este libro logra muy bien es la personalización y los "rostros" claros que Frame asigna a sus personajes que evitan que sean tan extraños y, en cambio, humaniza estas frágiles vidas.
El estilo de narración de la corriente de la conciencia, así como el uso de una prosa fragmentada y recuerdos fracturados, permiten que la historia se manifieste en todo su horror. La novela en sí es impresionante y contundente, y no se puede leer a la ligera o sin la dedicación del lector. “Rostros en el agua” es innegablemente una lectura intensa, y leerla es, en algunos puntos, decididamente agotador, pero es de esos libros que sabes que realmente deberías leer el catálogo completo del autor tan pronto como te sea posible.
May 16, 2019
(4.5) I feel a bit sorry for books like Mind on Fire and Rabbits for Food, which I read alongside and shortly after Faces in the Water, respectively – there was no way those depictions of life in a mental hospital could compete with Frame’s wonderful and frightening work of autofiction. Just as Frame’s To the Is-land had some of the best writing about childhood I’ve ever read, this is probably the best inside picture of mental illness I’ve read. Istina Mavet (which looks awfully like it should be an anagram of something) is in and out of the innocuous-sounding New Zealand mental hospitals Cliffhaven and Treecroft between ages 20 and 28 (~1945 to 1953).
At that time “the idea still prevailed that mental illness was a form of childish naughtiness which might be cured in a Victorian environment with the persuasion of stern speech and edifying literature.” The patients are indeed treated like children, if not like animals, and expected to have no moral decision-making ability. As one nurse excuses a patient’s actions, “She doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t know what I’m saying. Can’t you understand that these people to all intents and purposes are dead?”
Istina undergoes regular shock treatments and is moved back and forth between different wings of the hospital depending on how compliant she’s been recently. The only joys in her days are the arrival of the library van and being trusted to make tea for the staff. Being let out to visit her sister’s family is a mixed blessing as it requires her to try to act ‘normal’ and turn the hospital and her fellow patients into witty anecdotes. Towards the book’s end, the threat of a lobotomy looms like a thundercloud: “Dr. Portman … had decided they would bore two holes in the side of my head for my unsuitable personality to fly out like a migrating bird to another country and never return not even when spring came and the cherry blossom opened and the spindly wild plum showed white along the paddock fences.”
That occasional use of unpunctuated, stream-of-consciousness prose is a particularly effective way of conveying the protagonist’s terror. This is simply stunning writing, docked just half a point because, as is inevitable for books about institutional routines, the content becomes slightly repetitive at times. I know that this novel was highly autobiographical for Frame, and look forward to finding out more about the true events that inspired it (I’m partway through her second volume of autobiography, An Angel at My Table).
Favorite lines:
“There is no past present or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
“I do not know my own identity. I was burgled of body and hung in the sky like a woman of straw.”
“I still could not believe there was no hope for me, or I kept running over the rat-infested no man’s land between belief and disbelief and pitching camp on one side or the other. I dithered in Time, not knowing what to call forth from the future, fearing to face the present … and not daring to turn to the past. So I was silent, attacking my time-bordered self, blighting, like black frost, the edges of my life until they crumpled and dropped in the bitter southeast wind from the sea.”
At that time “the idea still prevailed that mental illness was a form of childish naughtiness which might be cured in a Victorian environment with the persuasion of stern speech and edifying literature.” The patients are indeed treated like children, if not like animals, and expected to have no moral decision-making ability. As one nurse excuses a patient’s actions, “She doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t know what I’m saying. Can’t you understand that these people to all intents and purposes are dead?”
Istina undergoes regular shock treatments and is moved back and forth between different wings of the hospital depending on how compliant she’s been recently. The only joys in her days are the arrival of the library van and being trusted to make tea for the staff. Being let out to visit her sister’s family is a mixed blessing as it requires her to try to act ‘normal’ and turn the hospital and her fellow patients into witty anecdotes. Towards the book’s end, the threat of a lobotomy looms like a thundercloud: “Dr. Portman … had decided they would bore two holes in the side of my head for my unsuitable personality to fly out like a migrating bird to another country and never return not even when spring came and the cherry blossom opened and the spindly wild plum showed white along the paddock fences.”
That occasional use of unpunctuated, stream-of-consciousness prose is a particularly effective way of conveying the protagonist’s terror. This is simply stunning writing, docked just half a point because, as is inevitable for books about institutional routines, the content becomes slightly repetitive at times. I know that this novel was highly autobiographical for Frame, and look forward to finding out more about the true events that inspired it (I’m partway through her second volume of autobiography, An Angel at My Table).
Favorite lines:
“There is no past present or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
“I do not know my own identity. I was burgled of body and hung in the sky like a woman of straw.”
“I still could not believe there was no hope for me, or I kept running over the rat-infested no man’s land between belief and disbelief and pitching camp on one side or the other. I dithered in Time, not knowing what to call forth from the future, fearing to face the present … and not daring to turn to the past. So I was silent, attacking my time-bordered self, blighting, like black frost, the edges of my life until they crumpled and dropped in the bitter southeast wind from the sea.”
January 8, 2023
“Hastaneye yatırılmıştım, çünkü diğer insanlarla aramdaki buz tabakasında büyük bir yarık açılmış ve ben çekiç başlı tropikal köpekbalıkları, foklar ve kutup ayılarının usulca yan yana yüzdüğü mor renkli bir denizde onların dünyalarının benden gittikçe uzaklaşmasını seyrediyordum. Buzun üstünde tek başımaydım. Birden kar fırtınası başladı ve kendimi uyuşmuş hissettim ve uzanıp uyumak istedim ve eğer yabancılar ellerinde makaslar, içi bit dolu kumaş torbalar ve kırmızı etiketli zehir şişeleri ve daha önce fark etmediğim diğer tehlikelerle çıkıp gelmemiş olsalardı öyle de yapardım”
Janet Frame, trajik bir hayat hikâyesine sahip yazarlardan. Çok küçük yaştayken kitaplarla, kütüphaneyle tanışmış ve ailesiyle sorunlu ilişkisinden kaçıp sığındığı kitapların dünyasını çok sevmiş. Yazar olmak isterken öğretmenlik yapmak zorunda kalmış ve bu esnada geçirdiği bir sinir buhranı sonrasında da sekiz yılını geçireceği akıl hastanesinde bulmuş kendini. Üstelik tüm bu süre sonunda yanlış teşhis konduğu anlaşılmış ve Frame üstelik ödüllü bir yazar olarak hastaneden taburcu edilmiş. Sudaki Yüzler’i de kendi hikayesinden yola çıkarak kurgulamış. (Kitaba başlamadan önce ilk sayfada yer alan yazarın biyografisini okumanızı öneririm. Ordaki bilgiler ışığında kitaptaki detayları da yakalayınca eser çok daha anlamlı ve etkileyici oluyor). İki farklı akıl hastanesinde yaşananlar anlatılıyor romanda. Frame, Felaketzedeler Evi romanını anımsatacak şekilde, marjinalize edilip toplum dışına itilen ve insani haklardan dahi yoksun bırakılan akıl hastalarını oldukça gerçekçi ama konunun kasvetinin okuru boğmasına müsaade etmeden, lirik bir dille anlatıyor. Akıl hastanesinde bir gün nasıl geçer, buraya kapatılan insanlar neler yaşarlar tanıklık ediyorsunuz. Araya, ailesiyle olan ilişkilerini ve kitaplarla olan geçmişini de serpiştiriyor Frame ve gerek karakterin geçmişini öğrenmek gerekse bu geçmişin Frame’in bizzat başından geçenler olduğunu bilmek inanılmaz keyif veriyor. Frame, uğradığı haksızlık ve yıllar boyu gördüğü kötü muameleye rağmen, yaşadıklarına uzaktan, daha geniş bir çerçeveden bakmayı da başarıyor ve bir yandan akıl hastanesindeki düzeni eleştirirken öte yandan sistemin kokuşmuş yanlarını ve bunların yaşananlardaki payını da atlamıyor. Ama dediğim gibi yazarla ilgili beni en çok etkileyen şey -şüphesiz güçlü bir kadın olarak verdiği mücadeleden sonra- dili. Konusunu bildiğim için okurken boğulacağımı düşünüyordum ama hiç öyle olmadı. Aksine Frame’in benzetmeleri o kadar muhteşem, anlatımı öyle naif ve duru ki elimden bırakmak istemedim okurken. Akıl hastalığı şiir gibi anlatılır mı diyorsunuz ve hakikaten bu konuda yazılmış en güçlü metinlerden biri. Sadece hastanede geçirdiği süreçte, bir okur olarak yaşantısının yanında, yazmak için verdiği mücadeleyi de okumak isterdim, belki de bu başka bir romanının konusudur. Frame’in kalemiyle herkesin tanışmasını çok isterim.
Janet Frame, trajik bir hayat hikâyesine sahip yazarlardan. Çok küçük yaştayken kitaplarla, kütüphaneyle tanışmış ve ailesiyle sorunlu ilişkisinden kaçıp sığındığı kitapların dünyasını çok sevmiş. Yazar olmak isterken öğretmenlik yapmak zorunda kalmış ve bu esnada geçirdiği bir sinir buhranı sonrasında da sekiz yılını geçireceği akıl hastanesinde bulmuş kendini. Üstelik tüm bu süre sonunda yanlış teşhis konduğu anlaşılmış ve Frame üstelik ödüllü bir yazar olarak hastaneden taburcu edilmiş. Sudaki Yüzler’i de kendi hikayesinden yola çıkarak kurgulamış. (Kitaba başlamadan önce ilk sayfada yer alan yazarın biyografisini okumanızı öneririm. Ordaki bilgiler ışığında kitaptaki detayları da yakalayınca eser çok daha anlamlı ve etkileyici oluyor). İki farklı akıl hastanesinde yaşananlar anlatılıyor romanda. Frame, Felaketzedeler Evi romanını anımsatacak şekilde, marjinalize edilip toplum dışına itilen ve insani haklardan dahi yoksun bırakılan akıl hastalarını oldukça gerçekçi ama konunun kasvetinin okuru boğmasına müsaade etmeden, lirik bir dille anlatıyor. Akıl hastanesinde bir gün nasıl geçer, buraya kapatılan insanlar neler yaşarlar tanıklık ediyorsunuz. Araya, ailesiyle olan ilişkilerini ve kitaplarla olan geçmişini de serpiştiriyor Frame ve gerek karakterin geçmişini öğrenmek gerekse bu geçmişin Frame’in bizzat başından geçenler olduğunu bilmek inanılmaz keyif veriyor. Frame, uğradığı haksızlık ve yıllar boyu gördüğü kötü muameleye rağmen, yaşadıklarına uzaktan, daha geniş bir çerçeveden bakmayı da başarıyor ve bir yandan akıl hastanesindeki düzeni eleştirirken öte yandan sistemin kokuşmuş yanlarını ve bunların yaşananlardaki payını da atlamıyor. Ama dediğim gibi yazarla ilgili beni en çok etkileyen şey -şüphesiz güçlü bir kadın olarak verdiği mücadeleden sonra- dili. Konusunu bildiğim için okurken boğulacağımı düşünüyordum ama hiç öyle olmadı. Aksine Frame’in benzetmeleri o kadar muhteşem, anlatımı öyle naif ve duru ki elimden bırakmak istemedim okurken. Akıl hastalığı şiir gibi anlatılır mı diyorsunuz ve hakikaten bu konuda yazılmış en güçlü metinlerden biri. Sadece hastanede geçirdiği süreçte, bir okur olarak yaşantısının yanında, yazmak için verdiği mücadeleyi de okumak isterdim, belki de bu başka bir romanının konusudur. Frame’in kalemiyle herkesin tanışmasını çok isterim.
March 9, 2022
Cliffhaven i Treecroft. Dos noms que podrien anunciar llocs paradisíacs de Nova Zelanda on passar-hi unes vacances molt agradables. Però són els noms de dos sanatoris en els que la nostra protagonista, Ístina Mavet, va passar molts anys de la seva vida.
En realitat, no són llocs reals, però estan basats en institucions que sí que ho eren. Tampoc l'Ístina va existir realment, però sí l'autora Janet Frame i tantes altres Ístines que van ser apartades de la societat en centres psiquiàtrics més dedicats a invisibilitzar-les que a trobar solució als seus problemes. Ens trobem davant d'un relat autobiogràfic disfressat de ficció, però amb una riquesa de detalls com només algú que ha patit una situació així sabria explicar.
No sabem per quin motiu l'Ístina ingressa a Cliffhaven, ni per què més tard acaba a Treecroft. Però coneixem els seus neguits i el fil dels seus pensaments en primera persona. El tracte denigrant que rep per part de les infermeres, el pànic al tractament amb electroxoc, les amenaces si no es porta bé i està tranquil·la i la possibilitat, cada cop més propera, de rebre una lobotomia que la canviï per sempre. La mort, sempre planant. I les altres internes, la relació amb les quals no sempre és fàcil, però que acaben sent família.
Sens dubte, un testimoni que no deixa indiferent i que posa de manifest com han canviat les coses en el tractament de la salut mental des dels anys 40 fins ara, tot i que l'estigma social continua. El relat avança a un ritme monòton i la descripció pot arribar a ser una mica reiterativa, però és tan realista, tan esfereïdora... encomana la por i la indefensió perquè ho vivim des de dins, com un pacient més. I tampoc nosaltres en podrem escapar.
(SERGI)
En realitat, no són llocs reals, però estan basats en institucions que sí que ho eren. Tampoc l'Ístina va existir realment, però sí l'autora Janet Frame i tantes altres Ístines que van ser apartades de la societat en centres psiquiàtrics més dedicats a invisibilitzar-les que a trobar solució als seus problemes. Ens trobem davant d'un relat autobiogràfic disfressat de ficció, però amb una riquesa de detalls com només algú que ha patit una situació així sabria explicar.
No sabem per quin motiu l'Ístina ingressa a Cliffhaven, ni per què més tard acaba a Treecroft. Però coneixem els seus neguits i el fil dels seus pensaments en primera persona. El tracte denigrant que rep per part de les infermeres, el pànic al tractament amb electroxoc, les amenaces si no es porta bé i està tranquil·la i la possibilitat, cada cop més propera, de rebre una lobotomia que la canviï per sempre. La mort, sempre planant. I les altres internes, la relació amb les quals no sempre és fàcil, però que acaben sent família.
Sens dubte, un testimoni que no deixa indiferent i que posa de manifest com han canviat les coses en el tractament de la salut mental des dels anys 40 fins ara, tot i que l'estigma social continua. El relat avança a un ritme monòton i la descripció pot arribar a ser una mica reiterativa, però és tan realista, tan esfereïdora... encomana la por i la indefensió perquè ho vivim des de dins, com un pacient més. I tampoc nosaltres en podrem escapar.
(SERGI)
February 27, 2023
Istina está ingresada en un centro psiquiátrico, ni siquiera ella misma sabe bien porqué, y en un desolador relato nos cuenta su experiencia allí. Despojada de toda humanidad y dignidad, la van llevando de un lado a otro, sin explicaciones, sin ningún respeto hacia su persona, siempre bajo la amenaza de recibir un tratamiento de electroshock "si no se porta bien"...
Su voz se te clava, puedes notar su angustia, su confusión, su terror, su absoluta desesperación. Es desgarrador. No tengo palabras para describir la congoja y el desconsuelo que transmite.
Y, lamentablemente, la autora sabía bien de lo que hablaba. Porque si bien no es una autobiografía como tal, la novela está basada en sus propias experiencias en diferentes hospitales mentales por los que pasó. Todo lo que narra en cuanto a rutinas en los centros, los tratamientos que se aplicaban, la forma de proceder de médicos, enfermeras y cuidadores fueron hechos que vivió ella misma en primera persona. Y mezcla esas prácticas y procedimientos concretos con unos pasajes llenos de sensibilidad y lirismo, atravesando sus pensamientos y sensaciones cargadas de simbolismo, a veces de una lucidez deslumbrante y otras sumergidas en la más completa oscuridad. Me ha sorprendido muchísimo su narración, y más después de leer la nota del editor en la que nos habla un poco más de la vida personal de la autora, y que esta vez me ha emocionado especialmente.
No es un libro fácil de leer, es muy muy duro y se pasa verdaderamente mal, pero Janet Frame merece que se le reconozca su historia, no puede caer en el olvido.
Su voz se te clava, puedes notar su angustia, su confusión, su terror, su absoluta desesperación. Es desgarrador. No tengo palabras para describir la congoja y el desconsuelo que transmite.
Y, lamentablemente, la autora sabía bien de lo que hablaba. Porque si bien no es una autobiografía como tal, la novela está basada en sus propias experiencias en diferentes hospitales mentales por los que pasó. Todo lo que narra en cuanto a rutinas en los centros, los tratamientos que se aplicaban, la forma de proceder de médicos, enfermeras y cuidadores fueron hechos que vivió ella misma en primera persona. Y mezcla esas prácticas y procedimientos concretos con unos pasajes llenos de sensibilidad y lirismo, atravesando sus pensamientos y sensaciones cargadas de simbolismo, a veces de una lucidez deslumbrante y otras sumergidas en la más completa oscuridad. Me ha sorprendido muchísimo su narración, y más después de leer la nota del editor en la que nos habla un poco más de la vida personal de la autora, y que esta vez me ha emocionado especialmente.
No es un libro fácil de leer, es muy muy duro y se pasa verdaderamente mal, pero Janet Frame merece que se le reconozca su historia, no puede caer en el olvido.
September 23, 2024
The Kiwi Sylvia Plath (minus the head in the oven bit; although Frame did want to be a poet).
A shocking account of life in and out of psych wards that was as bleak and unforgiving as I thought it would be. Frame's book feels just as important as it would have done back in the mid 20th century as, although treatment, assessment and what not have moved on from all that prodding & probing, it's still a timely reminder of just how misunderstood mental illness was, and is. Considering Frame's semi-autobiographical protagonist is supposedly off her trolley - from the point of view of those caring for her anyway, her keen observations and reasoning when it came to other patients and staff members shows she wasn't completely deficient when it came to her levels of sanity.
(I couldn't help but imagine the Chief here (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) picking up a member of staff like they were a paperweight and throwing them through a window).
February 7, 2017
Janet Frame's Faces in the Water was a book club pick for January, and a book which I had not expected to love quite as much as I did. Whilst I have wanted to read it for years, it is a tome which has so far evaded me in bookshops and the like; I had to resort to the Internet to find a copy of it.
From the outset, I was immediately captivated. We are effectively living inside protagonist Istina Mavet's head, as she negotiates the mental hospital in which she is incarcerated. As this account is based upon Frame's own experiences, there is an added edge of horror to the whole. Frame's writing is striking and beguiling, and every sentence is memorable: 'I will write about the season of peril. I was put in hospital because a great gap opened in the ice floe between myself and the other people whom I watched, with their world, drifting away through a violet-coloured sea where hammerhead sharks in tropical ease swam side by side with the seals and the polar bears'. Istina's voice is sharp, and her ideas verge upon the theatrical: 'I was not yet civilized; I traded my safety for the glass beads of fantasy', and 'I swallowed a stream of stars; it was easy...'.
Frame's account is vividly appealing particularly when she discusses the outside world, which is barred to Istina and her peers, and the whole is so well paced - for instance, the passage in which Istina discusses the dangers left behind 'all the doors which lead to and from the world'. There is a dreamlike element ever-present within, and one can pick out nods to various fairytales and other childhood stories too: '... I dream and cannot wake, and I am cast over the cliff and hang there by two fingers that are danced and trampled on by the Giant unreality'.
Despite this, Istina is still poignant and to the point - as well as unarguably chilling - when discussing the doctors and nurses who walk the corridors of the hospital: 'Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime'.
As readers, we are immediately aware of the never-ending, and frankly terrifying, cycle of waiting for Electroshock Therapy every day. Frame really pulls the innards of the institution out to be looked at by us, the outsiders, who do not have to live with the consequences of being deemed unsafe within the wide society. She lays the life of the mental hospital bare; yes, there is an element of retrospect and historical contextualisation at play here, but it does not serve to make the scenes which Istina describes any less appalling.
The stream-of-consciousness style of narration, as well as the use of fragmented prose and fractured memories, allow the story to come through in all of its horror. Istina is fascinatingly complex, and oh-so-real. The novel itself is stunning and hard-hitting, and not one which can be read lightly, or without dedication from the reader. Faces in the Water is undeniably intense, and reading it is, at points, decidedly exhausting, but when an author reminds you this much of the utterly wonderful Shirley Jackson, you know that you really should read her entire back catalogue as soon as you are able to get your hands on it.
From the outset, I was immediately captivated. We are effectively living inside protagonist Istina Mavet's head, as she negotiates the mental hospital in which she is incarcerated. As this account is based upon Frame's own experiences, there is an added edge of horror to the whole. Frame's writing is striking and beguiling, and every sentence is memorable: 'I will write about the season of peril. I was put in hospital because a great gap opened in the ice floe between myself and the other people whom I watched, with their world, drifting away through a violet-coloured sea where hammerhead sharks in tropical ease swam side by side with the seals and the polar bears'. Istina's voice is sharp, and her ideas verge upon the theatrical: 'I was not yet civilized; I traded my safety for the glass beads of fantasy', and 'I swallowed a stream of stars; it was easy...'.
Frame's account is vividly appealing particularly when she discusses the outside world, which is barred to Istina and her peers, and the whole is so well paced - for instance, the passage in which Istina discusses the dangers left behind 'all the doors which lead to and from the world'. There is a dreamlike element ever-present within, and one can pick out nods to various fairytales and other childhood stories too: '... I dream and cannot wake, and I am cast over the cliff and hang there by two fingers that are danced and trampled on by the Giant unreality'.
Despite this, Istina is still poignant and to the point - as well as unarguably chilling - when discussing the doctors and nurses who walk the corridors of the hospital: 'Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime'.
As readers, we are immediately aware of the never-ending, and frankly terrifying, cycle of waiting for Electroshock Therapy every day. Frame really pulls the innards of the institution out to be looked at by us, the outsiders, who do not have to live with the consequences of being deemed unsafe within the wide society. She lays the life of the mental hospital bare; yes, there is an element of retrospect and historical contextualisation at play here, but it does not serve to make the scenes which Istina describes any less appalling.
The stream-of-consciousness style of narration, as well as the use of fragmented prose and fractured memories, allow the story to come through in all of its horror. Istina is fascinatingly complex, and oh-so-real. The novel itself is stunning and hard-hitting, and not one which can be read lightly, or without dedication from the reader. Faces in the Water is undeniably intense, and reading it is, at points, decidedly exhausting, but when an author reminds you this much of the utterly wonderful Shirley Jackson, you know that you really should read her entire back catalogue as soon as you are able to get your hands on it.
January 15, 2020
A well written, thought provoking, interesting, sad, tragic novel told in the first person, by Istina Mavet, a young woman who spends over eight years at two mental institutions in New Zealand in the 1950s. This novel reads like a memoir. Note that the author spent 8 years in a mental institution, wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia.
We learn about the poor conditions of the mental institutions and gain an understanding of the social interaction and dynamics between patients, nurses and doctors. The description of various ways patients are treated is generally unpleasant to read. As a reader you gain an understanding of what it means to be labelled as ‘mad’.
Here are a couple of examples of the author’s first person narrative style:
‘And at times I murmured the token phrase to the doctor, ‘When can I go home?’ Knowing that home was the place where I least desired to be. There they would watch me for signs of abnormality, like ferrets around a rabbit burrow waiting for the rabbit to appear.’
“If you can’t adapt yourself to living in a mental hospital how do you expect to be able to live ‘out in the world’?” How indeed?’
We learn about the poor conditions of the mental institutions and gain an understanding of the social interaction and dynamics between patients, nurses and doctors. The description of various ways patients are treated is generally unpleasant to read. As a reader you gain an understanding of what it means to be labelled as ‘mad’.
Here are a couple of examples of the author’s first person narrative style:
‘And at times I murmured the token phrase to the doctor, ‘When can I go home?’ Knowing that home was the place where I least desired to be. There they would watch me for signs of abnormality, like ferrets around a rabbit burrow waiting for the rabbit to appear.’
“If you can’t adapt yourself to living in a mental hospital how do you expect to be able to live ‘out in the world’?” How indeed?’
August 1, 2024
‘İnsan ölüm için sadece bir anlığına durur; iki kalp atışının arasında yatan kısa bir ara ve paniktir yalnızca.’
.
Istina Mavet bir akıl hastanesinde.
Uyuşturuluyor, elektrik veriliyor, itilip kakılıyor ama her şeyden önemlisi: dinlenilmiyor~
Yıllar boyu koğuştan koğuşa konuluyor.
Başka hastaları da izliyor, hemşireler ve doktorları da..
.
Yazdığı öykülerle ödül kazandığında hasta olmadığı fark edilen bir yazar Janet Frame. Yazıyla kurtuluyor, belki de yazıyla iyileşiyor.
Sudaki Yüzler ile gördüğü yüzlere değiyoruz biz de, kızıyoruz-üzülüyoruz-şaşırıyoruz.
Etkilenerek, göğsüme yumruklar yiyerek okudum bu kitabı.
Yine de ümitvâr buldum Sudaki Yüzler’i..
Yazarın diğer eserlerini de edineceğim yakın zamanda ~
.
Ayça Çınaroğlu çevirisi, Davut Yücel kapak tasarımıyla ~
.
Istina Mavet bir akıl hastanesinde.
Uyuşturuluyor, elektrik veriliyor, itilip kakılıyor ama her şeyden önemlisi: dinlenilmiyor~
Yıllar boyu koğuştan koğuşa konuluyor.
Başka hastaları da izliyor, hemşireler ve doktorları da..
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Yazdığı öykülerle ödül kazandığında hasta olmadığı fark edilen bir yazar Janet Frame. Yazıyla kurtuluyor, belki de yazıyla iyileşiyor.
Sudaki Yüzler ile gördüğü yüzlere değiyoruz biz de, kızıyoruz-üzülüyoruz-şaşırıyoruz.
Etkilenerek, göğsüme yumruklar yiyerek okudum bu kitabı.
Yine de ümitvâr buldum Sudaki Yüzler’i..
Yazarın diğer eserlerini de edineceğim yakın zamanda ~
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Ayça Çınaroğlu çevirisi, Davut Yücel kapak tasarımıyla ~
April 28, 2018
Cosa può desiderare un malato di mente, un pazzo? Essere come gli altri? Allentare la tensione della propria condizione? Non doversi rifugiare nell'angolo più remoto dentro di sé per non sentire la sofferenza? Forse, ma la cosa che più desidera (la più difficile da ottenere) è che gli si consenta di conservare la propria dignità di persona.
October 21, 2021
He sees the land of meaning, and one path to it, and the so-called 'normal' people traveling swiftly and in comfort to the land; he does not include the shipwrecked people who arrive by devious lonely routes, and the many who dwell in the land in the beginning.
July 29, 2025
Many years ago I made several visits to a friend who was in a psychiatric ward with severe depression. It was an unpleasant and uncomfortable experience for me, but must have been a great deal worse for him and for the others who were there. He was discharged after a few weeks, but most of those described here were never likely to be discharged. This autobiographical novel is set in 1950’s New Zealand, and is written to shock and enlist our sympathy. In this it succeeds – on the whole.
Sometimes I felt the author was manipulating me to say – look how awful this is. I had to remind myself that some of the patients were murderers for whom there seemed no real alternative to permanent secure incarceration; and also that conditions seemed to me to be relatively humane, all things considered. Or at least not deliberately inhumane, as far as the institution was concerned. Some of the things the patients do to one another are pretty horrible though.
The author found her salvation in books, and anyone reading her words is likely to feel the same way (I certainly do). This is possibly the most hopeful thing about the book. I respect and even admire the art and the artist, but I also closed the book with a feeling of relief.
Sometimes I felt the author was manipulating me to say – look how awful this is. I had to remind myself that some of the patients were murderers for whom there seemed no real alternative to permanent secure incarceration; and also that conditions seemed to me to be relatively humane, all things considered. Or at least not deliberately inhumane, as far as the institution was concerned. Some of the things the patients do to one another are pretty horrible though.
The author found her salvation in books, and anyone reading her words is likely to feel the same way (I certainly do). This is possibly the most hopeful thing about the book. I respect and even admire the art and the artist, but I also closed the book with a feeling of relief.
February 12, 2020
3.5 stars
Considering the subject matter I was expecting a story that would punch me in the gut and leave me emotionally exhausted. The writing was beautiful but unfortunately didn't pull me in and I didn't really care about the character. It's s till a good book. I was only expecting more.
Considering the subject matter I was expecting a story that would punch me in the gut and leave me emotionally exhausted. The writing was beautiful but unfortunately didn't pull me in and I didn't really care about the character. It's s till a good book. I was only expecting more.
February 20, 2022
Follows the narrator Istina Mavet, through nearly nine years in mental institutions in New Zealand during the 40s and 50s, and revealed the appalling state of mental health treatment at that time. Istina isn’t Janet Frame although she said Istina and others in the novel are closely based on patients she encountered during her own time in several NZ hospitals.
The following is just a bare-bones outline to help me remember; in fact Faces in the Water is heart-rending perceptive human tender shocking desperate sardonic and witty even, and I was highlighting more memorable passages in this book than I can ever remember doing. This is a short work and more accomplished than Owls Do Cry, her first novel; haunting, brilliant and beautiful writing …
Crippled by anxiety, depression and acute loneliness, Istina is sent to Cliffhaven (modelled on Seacliff Mental Hospital near Dunedin) where punishment, coercion and ridicule substitute for therapy.
Within the hospital there are multiple hierarchies: those recently admitted or considered curable are in Ward 4, while the chronic and “hopeless” cases are warehoused in Ward 2, which is also used as a threat and punishment for any patient who steps out of line.
In particular ECT is used for control rather than treatment:
After three years and many ECT sessions, Istina is released into her family’s care, but without any support or real improvement in her mental state, soon relapses and is back in Treecroft, an Auckland mental hospital. Here, more modern, supposedly sympathetic psychiatric attitudes are in vogue – but as in Cliffhaven, once patients cross the line and become “un-cooperative” they are punished with ECT and sent to Lawn Lodge, a ward even grimmer than Ward 2, and where the then-new leucotomy procedure is held out to offer hope of a “new” life.
Istina is moved between various levels of care, related more to her degree of submission than her mental health, and after two or three years is taken out by her sister.
Again, without any support she is back in Cliffhaven more fearful even than before, though with a promise that she won’t be given ECT again. Punishment however remains as important as before and soon Istina is deemed hopeless …
Without hope, she attempts suicide and the ECT promise is broken; later, she is scheduled for a leucotomy, managing to avoid it at the last minute however by appealing to the hospital director.
(I thought the way this incident unfolded didn’t seem very likely, and I wondered why Janet Frame hadn’t used the real reason that she herself had avoided it – that the doctors had realized she had just won a significant award for a book of short stories. But perhaps in 1961 she still wasn’t ready to reveal that)
Towards the end Istina is given insulin therapy, which doesn’t help her either. But something else does: after years of reading deprivation, miraculously one day, the director allows her to help select reading material from the book bus that came round every few months.
She was released a few months later, which is where the novel ends:
Wow. But can you read it without knowing anything of Janet Frame’s life? Surely yes, though you may think she was exaggerating the horrors. In fact, she says in An Angel at my Table, the 2nd vol of her autobiography, that she felt it necessary to tone down her experiences for the work to be accepted back in the sixties.
A few of the other quotes I particularly liked:
* I will write about the season of peril. I was put in hospital because a great gap opened in the ice floe between myself and the other people whom I watched, with their world, drifting away through a violet-coloured sea where hammerhead sharks in tropical ease swam side by side with the seals and the polar bears. I was alone on the ice.
* Their behaviour affronted, caused uneasiness; they wept and moaned; they quarrelled and complained. They were a nuisance and were treated as such. It was forgotten that they too possessed a prized humanity which needed care and love, that a tiny poetic essence could be distilled from their overflowing squalid truth.
* Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with tired words like used and broken bottles which, catching the sunlight as they lie embedded in the wall, are mistaken for jewels.
* when suddenly a library appeared just outside the window and a tweedy fairy godmother had not denied my request to look inside. But [the Chaplain] arrived and turned me away because I had not the status necessary for people who view shelves of books. I was a patient and could not be trusted; I was a child and would not grasp the content, the essential meaning, of the books.
The chaplain had spoken to me as if I suffered from a disease that would infect the books.
The following is just a bare-bones outline to help me remember; in fact Faces in the Water is heart-rending perceptive human tender shocking desperate sardonic and witty even, and I was highlighting more memorable passages in this book than I can ever remember doing. This is a short work and more accomplished than Owls Do Cry, her first novel; haunting, brilliant and beautiful writing …
Crippled by anxiety, depression and acute loneliness, Istina is sent to Cliffhaven (modelled on Seacliff Mental Hospital near Dunedin) where punishment, coercion and ridicule substitute for therapy.
Within the hospital there are multiple hierarchies: those recently admitted or considered curable are in Ward 4, while the chronic and “hopeless” cases are warehoused in Ward 2, which is also used as a threat and punishment for any patient who steps out of line.
In particular ECT is used for control rather than treatment:
… shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realise that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.
After three years and many ECT sessions, Istina is released into her family’s care, but without any support or real improvement in her mental state, soon relapses and is back in Treecroft, an Auckland mental hospital. Here, more modern, supposedly sympathetic psychiatric attitudes are in vogue – but as in Cliffhaven, once patients cross the line and become “un-cooperative” they are punished with ECT and sent to Lawn Lodge, a ward even grimmer than Ward 2, and where the then-new leucotomy procedure is held out to offer hope of a “new” life.
Louise improved. The doctor came to see her twice a week! And then, as she stayed day after day in Lawn Lodge and the novelty of her operation wore off, and the doctor had no more time to see her twice a week, although still docile, she grew more careless about her appearance, she did not mind wetting her pants, and the nurses, feeling cheated as people do when change refuses to adopt the dramatic forms expected of it, gave up trying to re-educate her and very soon she was again just one of the hopping, screaming people in the dayroom.
Istina is moved between various levels of care, related more to her degree of submission than her mental health, and after two or three years is taken out by her sister.
Again, without any support she is back in Cliffhaven more fearful even than before, though with a promise that she won’t be given ECT again. Punishment however remains as important as before and soon Istina is deemed hopeless …
My moments of fear became more uncontrollable, and one day Matron Glass and Sister Honey gave their joint prescription, beginning, ‘what she needs is …’
‘What you need,’ Matron said to me, ‘is bringing you to your senses. What you need is a stay in Ward Two’
Without hope, she attempts suicide and the ECT promise is broken; later, she is scheduled for a leucotomy, managing to avoid it at the last minute however by appealing to the hospital director.
(I thought the way this incident unfolded didn’t seem very likely, and I wondered why Janet Frame hadn’t used the real reason that she herself had avoided it – that the doctors had realized she had just won a significant award for a book of short stories. But perhaps in 1961 she still wasn’t ready to reveal that)
Towards the end Istina is given insulin therapy, which doesn’t help her either. But something else does: after years of reading deprivation, miraculously one day, the director allows her to help select reading material from the book bus that came round every few months.
we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and turned his own memories with their dark side to face the light. And it was late afternoon when, with a headache of happiness, I returned to the ward. And from that day I felt in myself a reserve of warmth from which I could help myself, like coal from the cellar on a winter’s day, if the snow came or if the frost fell in the night to blacken the flowers and wither the new fruit.
She was released a few months later, which is where the novel ends:
I looked away from [the Ward 2 patients] and tried not to think of them and repeated to myself what one of the nurses had told me, ‘when you leave hospital you must forget all you have ever seen, put it out of your mind completely as if it never happened, and go live a normal life in the outside world.’
And by what I have written in this document you will see, won’t you, that I have obeyed her?
Wow. But can you read it without knowing anything of Janet Frame’s life? Surely yes, though you may think she was exaggerating the horrors. In fact, she says in An Angel at my Table, the 2nd vol of her autobiography, that she felt it necessary to tone down her experiences for the work to be accepted back in the sixties.
A few of the other quotes I particularly liked:
* I will write about the season of peril. I was put in hospital because a great gap opened in the ice floe between myself and the other people whom I watched, with their world, drifting away through a violet-coloured sea where hammerhead sharks in tropical ease swam side by side with the seals and the polar bears. I was alone on the ice.
* Their behaviour affronted, caused uneasiness; they wept and moaned; they quarrelled and complained. They were a nuisance and were treated as such. It was forgotten that they too possessed a prized humanity which needed care and love, that a tiny poetic essence could be distilled from their overflowing squalid truth.
* Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with tired words like used and broken bottles which, catching the sunlight as they lie embedded in the wall, are mistaken for jewels.
* when suddenly a library appeared just outside the window and a tweedy fairy godmother had not denied my request to look inside. But [the Chaplain] arrived and turned me away because I had not the status necessary for people who view shelves of books. I was a patient and could not be trusted; I was a child and would not grasp the content, the essential meaning, of the books.
The chaplain had spoken to me as if I suffered from a disease that would infect the books.
November 28, 2022
it is my feeling that janet frame is criminally underrated & deserves to be read alongside (dare i say INSTEAD OF) plath, wurtzel, kaysen et al
February 19, 2017
Everybody who works with mentally ill patients should read Janet Frame's largely autobiographical novel depicting the experiences of a sensitive woman incarcerated in an involuntary psychiatric unit for over a decade. Though "Faces in the Water" takes place in 1950s New Zealand, I was struck by the overpowering sense that it could just as easily have taken place in the present-day U.S. Yes, some of the technical details of psychiatric management protocols have changed since the 1950s (e.g., lobotomies are rarely performed anymore), but the social dynamic among psychiatric patients, nurses, and doctors that Frame describes here is unsettlingly similar to that which I myself observed when I was a medical student not long ago.
Frame is even more stylistically virtuosic and more compassionate in her perceptions of others than either Sylvia Plath in "The Bell Jar" or Joanne Greenberg in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." (Like Greenberg and unlike Plath, Frame overcame her psychiatric diagnosis and went on to live a happy, productive life.) (Spoilers ahead!) At the beginning of this novel, the narrator, Istina Mavet, is a passive and self-effacing observer of others; as the book progresses, however, the horrors to which Istina is subjected drive her to perform increasingly desperate acts, ranging from a half-baked escape attempt to an attempted suicide. The reader comes to suspect that Istina's incarceration, which her caregivers insist is "for her own good," is doing her no good at all. That is, the fact that Istina is deemed sane enough to return to society at the end of the book appears to have nothing to do with the psychiatric treatment she receives while in the hospital.
A good fraction of this book is just numbingly horrific, but there are a couple of poignant passages dealing with Istina's life-sustaining love of literature: when subjected to solitary confinement, she whiles away the hours by reciting memorized poems to herself, and she nearly breaks down in tears when a library van visits the hospital one day. Frame implies that what the allegedly "insane" Istina actually suffers from is an excess of what all poets suffer from: a heightened ability to perceive similarities between disparate things. "I never answered Mrs. Hogg to tell her the difference for I knew only the similarity that grew with it; the difference dispersed in the air and withered, leaving the fruit of similarity, like a catkin that reveals the hazelnut."
Frame is even more stylistically virtuosic and more compassionate in her perceptions of others than either Sylvia Plath in "The Bell Jar" or Joanne Greenberg in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." (Like Greenberg and unlike Plath, Frame overcame her psychiatric diagnosis and went on to live a happy, productive life.) (Spoilers ahead!) At the beginning of this novel, the narrator, Istina Mavet, is a passive and self-effacing observer of others; as the book progresses, however, the horrors to which Istina is subjected drive her to perform increasingly desperate acts, ranging from a half-baked escape attempt to an attempted suicide. The reader comes to suspect that Istina's incarceration, which her caregivers insist is "for her own good," is doing her no good at all. That is, the fact that Istina is deemed sane enough to return to society at the end of the book appears to have nothing to do with the psychiatric treatment she receives while in the hospital.
A good fraction of this book is just numbingly horrific, but there are a couple of poignant passages dealing with Istina's life-sustaining love of literature: when subjected to solitary confinement, she whiles away the hours by reciting memorized poems to herself, and she nearly breaks down in tears when a library van visits the hospital one day. Frame implies that what the allegedly "insane" Istina actually suffers from is an excess of what all poets suffer from: a heightened ability to perceive similarities between disparate things. "I never answered Mrs. Hogg to tell her the difference for I knew only the similarity that grew with it; the difference dispersed in the air and withered, leaving the fruit of similarity, like a catkin that reveals the hazelnut."
April 6, 2025
"Todos vemos los rostros en el agua. Los apartamos de nuestro pensamiento, incluso dejamos de creer que sean reales, y nos convertimos en moradores tranquilos del mundo; o quizás ni los olvidamos ni acudimos en su ayuda. A veces, por una triquiñuela de las circunstancias o del sueño o de un sesgo hostil de la luz, vemos nuestro propio rostro".
Siempre me es difícil evaluar la autobiografías.
Es un tema poco trabajado. En lo particular me enganchó la primera mitad, en donde sientes molestia e indignación por lo que vive la protagonista.
Ya en la segunda no pude volver a retomar lo que estaba leyendo y paso sin provocarme absolutamente nada.
Quise abandonar, pero mi TOC no me lo permitió.
Siempre me es difícil evaluar la autobiografías.
Es un tema poco trabajado. En lo particular me enganchó la primera mitad, en donde sientes molestia e indignación por lo que vive la protagonista.
Ya en la segunda no pude volver a retomar lo que estaba leyendo y paso sin provocarme absolutamente nada.
Quise abandonar, pero mi TOC no me lo permitió.
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