A doomed love for a homosexual friend is revealed in the authorised biography of Janet Frame, New Zealand's greatest living author.
Historian Michael King's book, Wrestling With the Angel, was launched by the Prime Minister this week and sheds new light on the reclusive writer.
In it, Frame recounts meeting the "chief
experience of my life" back in 1969 when on a residency in New Hampshire. He was an American painter and musician, William Theophilus (Bill) Brown, to whom she penned some salty limericks.
Frame stayed with Brown and his partner, artist Paul Wonner, and spoke of loving one "literally" and the other "figuratively."
Several years later she visited Brown in his Baltimore flat, telling New Zealand author Frank Sargeson that details of the stay were censored.
She then planned to return to live with the two men in California's more permissive society. But the dream apparently crumbled when the pair decided they could not offer the intimacy she hoped for.
Although much is known of Frame's battle with mental illness, details giving an insight to her private life have been sketchier.
In cooperating with King, she did not wish to dwell on the painful memories and he refrains from overt discussion of her sexuality.
But for readers, the New Hampshire affair is a new chapter in the story of Janet Frame.
To buy this book online from FlyingPig
Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame
