Tuesday, December 15, 2009

"Life is hell, but at least there are prizes."


"Or so one thought."


Those are the opening two sentences of the short story "Prizes" by Janet Frame.

A new selection of her short stories was released in New Zealand earlier this year. The American edition was released just last week:


Prizes: The Selected Stories of Janet Frame

Counterpoint Press USA December 2009


EXCERPTS FROM A RECENT REVIEW

"There are no prizes that Janet Frame did not receive or deserve, but, it seems, it is only in posthumous publication that her unerring eye and and startling prescience is so fully apparent."

"Entering the human heart? In the magnificent stories of Janet Frame, we are never out of it."

"...the title story is not about simple triumph, but a sharply satiric account of a young girl whose excellence is clawed away from her by the steady efforts of mediocre and conformist rivals."

"Time only highlights how much, in giving strong voice to her own apparent diffidence, Frame described the unjust invisibility of other women..."


~ Murray Bramwell, NZ Books Spring 2009


New Zealand Edition
Vintage, Random House NZ (2009)

Random House Australia will release an Australian edition in 2010.

The UK/Canada edition will also be published next year, by Virago Press.