Books like The Envoy from Mirror City

This volume lacks the emotional tug of the first two, but that’s not a bad thing; I appreciated its quieter and more reflective tone as Janet Frame describes her years overseas and a growing confidence in herself. After arriving in London, she made plans to head to Ibiza, mainly because she was still following advice given to her in NZ on how to live cheaply. But in fact it suited her perfectly, and she had her first love affair there. There is a lightness that was absent from the previous volumes, and which I thought was nicely captured when she discovered she’d checked her luggage at the left luggage counter and not on the train to Barcelona\ A sweeping cloud of tears threatened but did not fall. I gulped. Then, in spite of growing apprehension and a feeling of lonely misery, I was overtaken by the delight of being free of luggage. I watched the other passengers struggling to climb into the high Spanish train and my sense of freedom increased. Lighthearted now, I could have flown on my own wings to Barcelona and Ibiza. \ Back in London, (Ibiza had turned sour after the end of the affair, then – again following another crumb of advice – she spent a month or two in Andorra, of all places) she had two objectives: to write of course, but also, to understand whether she really did have schizophrenia. She had a referral to the Maudsley Hospital, where she was treated with kindness and understanding; the diagnosis was that \ I had never suffered from schizophrenia. I should never have been admitted to a mental hospital. Any problems I now experienced were mostly a direct result of my stay in hospital.I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I said shyly, formally, as if I had won a prize.\ But: \ At first, the truth seemed to be more terrifying than the lie. Schizophrenia, as a psychosis, had been an accomplishment, removing ordinary responsibility from the sufferer. I was bereaved. I was ashamed. How could I ask for help directly when there was ‘nothing wrong with me’? \ In fact it took months more treatment and ongoing therapy to undo the horror of her NZ experience, and start living as she wanted to rather than how she thought she should. Her psychiatrist suggested it would be helpful to write about that time: the book that became Faces in the Water. (I still find it a miracle that the NHS in the ‘50s had the resources to provide the level of sympathetic support that she described. I wonder how anyone like her would fare now.) There is much more here – Frame writes with such elegance and economy that months or years pass in the space of a few paragraphs, yet it doesn’t seem as if she left anything out. After seven years away, she returned to NZ when she learnt that her father had died. She was unprepared though for her status as a celebrated author “with an overseas reputation” - it’s funny to be reminded how much of an obsession that was in the 1960’s.She ends her story shortly after that, saying that her more recent past is still raw material that her imagination - her Envoy from Mirror City - needs time to process ... I’m paraphrasing a bit there because to be honest, I do find her metaphors and imagery a bit obscure sometimes. But still, this is a lovely and uplifting book.