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francesmthompson's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favourite books of the year... Introduced me to an author I hope will feature in my life again and again. Not bad for a book I picked up on the street.
voorbijdekim's review against another edition
3.0
I know I'm supposed to find it amazing. Beautifully written, big themes, literary references. It just did not really grab me. For a personal autobiography I felt a distance to the writer. It takes the long way to basically say you can write anywhere and 'there's no place like home'.
jainabee's review against another edition
4.0
One of the most miraculous things an author can do is to somehow twist your perception so you see the world through their idiosyncratic synapses. Your eyes see different angles in an unfamiliar light, your ears hear different frequencies, your senses have all squeezed through the microscopic pores of that imperceptible membrane which seems to separate us.
tardycreative's review against another edition
3.0
It's a curious read, very interesting in parts, very disturbing in others and very poetic (literally). However, if you can excuse the pun, you have to be in the frame of mind to read this book for prolonged periods, as it can be quite depressing - to me, this is the sort of book you have to read a little of for a couple of days and come back to in a couple of weeks in order for you not to get sucked into this world of sadness.
octavia_cade's review against another edition
4.0
I read and reviewed the three books making up this trilogy separately, so this is just a note for my own records. The four stars for the collection is an average of the three individual ratings (very consistent, four stars each for To the Is Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City).
As a whole, it's really a very interesting autobiography. I remember reading it back in high school, but most of the details had escaped me so it was like coming back to it new. I'll certainly be reading more of Frame in future!
As a whole, it's really a very interesting autobiography. I remember reading it back in high school, but most of the details had escaped me so it was like coming back to it new. I'll certainly be reading more of Frame in future!
octavia_cade's review against another edition
4.0
The second volume of Frame's autobiography, An Angel at My Table covers her life at university and her subsequent hospitalisation, for the better part of a decade, for schizophrenia. I should say suspected schizophrenia, for she never actually had it. In some ways for me this autobiography suffers a little for skating over what Frame went through in Seacliff mental hospital. I don't mean that I particularly want to read misery porn, but Frame herself mentions here that she'd already written extensively about this time of her life in her book Faces in the Water (which I haven't read but now want to). It's understandable that she doesn't want to have to cover the same ground twice, or in the same way, but her misdiagnosis and hospital stay is the central event of this volume of her autobiography, with reverberations from it spreading through the whole of her life. I can't help but think that the relief that Frank Sargeson gave her by providing a safe place to work and recover and write would have stood out all the more in the text if the worst parts of Frame's twenties hadn't been glossed over so much.
somewherehere_nz's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
1.0
I really tried to like this book, but I didn’t. I more or less skimmed my way through it, hopeful that there would be an unexpected juncture that would pull me in, there wasn’t. Frame is undoubtedly a gifted writer and had lived an interesting life, however I felt that her seemingly melancholic disposition seeped into the pages, which rendered into an emotionless reading experience.