Book of the Week: A STATE OF SIEGE by Janet Frame
After the death of her invalid mother, a retired art teacher leaves her birthplace in the south for a beach cottage on a sub-tropical island in the north. Freed from endless lessons on still life and the dominating presence of her family, she hopes at last to be alone with nature and the ‘room two inches behind the eyes’. But the solitude she has sought mocks her with echoes of her past, when, one stormy night, an intruder pounds ceaselessly and inexplicably on her door. Propulsive yet poignant, A State of Siege is a mesmerising exploration of the artistic process, of selfhood and loneliness, and of death and its counterpart: the need to survive, to live. SoS was first published in 1966, and is now back in print.
”Intensely personal, Frame’s writing is always spiralling in on itself, towards the condition of myth, and yet it nails the moment, pins down experiences so fleeting that others would never grasp them. What eludes ordinary language, she can capture in the extraordinary argot of her imagination.'' —Hilary Mantel