This book was published posthumously as the author considered it to be too personal as it is very autobiographical.
Grace Cleave is struggling with the onset of the English winter. her mind keeps drifting to home, New Zealand. she feels like a migratory bird and her mental health is suffering along with her writing. After a stay in hospital, Grace decides to accept an invitation to spend a weekend in rural England with an acquaintance and his family. Observing the young family her mind is drawn back to her own childhood in New Zealand.
However, the weekend is not a success, as Grace suffers acute anxiety with social etiquette, expectations and small daily interactions. She cuts her stay short to return to the seclusion of her flat and typewriter.
This book has all of Frame's trademark lyrical language and a painful honesty. I immediately recognized that she would now be diagnosed as autistic and this was confirmed as I did some research. Instead, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered shock treatments. She narrowly avoided having a scheduled lobotomy, only because of winning a literary prize. ( )

I found this book heartbreaking to read because of the acute discomfort of Grace, the narrator. She is so uncomfortable in social situations and Frame describes them so well, you can't help but feel you are going through the discomfort with Grace. Maybe it's also because I identified with Grace's social awkwardness that I found the story so moving.

Grace is a writer from New Zealand who has moved to London, has experienced some success with her writing, and has been invited to a couple's home in Relham for the weekend. Her desire to be alone again at home so she won't feel so on edge in company means she decides to go home a day earlier than planned, but her perception of her hosts' disappointment at this is tangible.

The parallel story of Grace's upbringing in New Zealand (the book is largely autobiographical and mentions Grace/Frame's time in Spain, written about in Angel at My Table) is woven into the book and Grace's description of herself as a bird recurs throughout.

I thought this was a beautifully written book and one which will stay with me for a long time. ( )

“I wonder, Grace thought. I’m glad I’m not like those dressmaker’s dummies whose heads are built in the shape of a cage, or my thoughts would fly out through the bars.” (Towards Another Summer, Janet Frame, from page 125.)

Janet Frame is a writer’s writer. Toward Another Summer is a beautifully written book of rare quality...a diamond in the rough, I suppose...a classic, for sure...a book that I would call a human document. Her generous use of language has its roots in the ordinary, but is magical how the story maintains a life of its own. Although it seems nothing happens in a physical sense of happening, everything that does happen happens internally; it is intense and very personal, her self-awareness is honest, the emotions deeply felt, unsettled, disconcerting. The reality of the inner life of a writer, the anxieties and fantasies, the wealth of memory... she is a migratory bird, flying toward another summer, looking for a safe place to land...to write...but a writer with writer’s block does not know where that will be or when. The loneliness of the solitary life, yet the reluctance to leave behind the familiar, her homesickness for New Zealand and homesickness for her typewriter are keenly felt...homesickness for not just home, but within her skin...sometimes it's a challenge living within one's own skin. There are several pages that I've marked to revisit because the powerful passages are precious. Janet Frame considered this novel to be too personal to publish during her lifetime, but she left no specific instructions about her wishes regarding the two bound copies of the typed manuscript preserved in two locations to keep them safe. I’m glad that the Janet Frame Literary Trust shepherded it into the light, it’s a book for writers, and a book for readers of writers. ( )

Belíssima obra sobre o exílio e o retorno, a nostalgia e as origens. ( )

This is a posthumous biographical novel by a New Zealander, written in 1963 after she moved to the UK. It describes her visit from London to the North to stay with a Kiwi journalist and his family for a few days, and reflects on her homesickness for NZ in a gray and dark Northern town of the UK.

The intense homesickness of Grace, the main character, is coupled with her excruciating shyness, anxiety and withdrawal. She lives in a world of poetic thoughts and sad reminiscences and her isolation is heart-rending. All the more so, when you reflect on the autobiographical content and the fact that Frame considered the book too personal to publish in her lifetime. Indeed, it must be asked if she ever really desired this book to be published.

It describes a writer who wants to transform herself into a bird, perhaps to fly back to her former country. Her intense anxiety at being unable to communicate with friends is contrasted with her rich interior world. New Zealand life as a child intersperses the pages of the awkward and unhappy woman stranded in a cold Northern UK town for a few days. It is deeply felt, poetic, and has a sad, tragic atmosphere of loss and loneliness and despair. There is an underlying sense that the writer is struggling to define the limits of sanity, depression and anxiety in her musings.

For a New Zealander, the references to the landscape, birds and culture of NZ is recognizable and understated. I am not sure if it would resonate so much with those who are not from NZ. It beautifully captures the thoughts that fly through a Kiwi’s mind when separated from the landscape and climate of that country.

The most striking feature of this writing is the intense shyness, anxiety and awkwardness of Frame’s external character, Grace Cleave. Her acute sensitivity is painful to witness. There is anticipatory anxiety about communicating with others, which is so strong that it often makes her mute. Despite this outward discomfiture, Grace has a rich, lyrical and poetic inner world that is very alive and palpably vivid. She reminds me of Virginia Woolf in her stylist use of prose (probably because I have just finished Mrs. Dalloway). There are elements of magic realism, poetic interludes and metaphorical allusions to her prose – she uses these techniques to highlight the vast differences in her inner fantasy world and outer reality.

I have not yet read her autobiographical works, which I understand are her crowning glory, but this is a writer that was diagnosed as suffering schizophrenia in NZ and scheduled to have a lobotomy. The only thing that prevented such a catastrophe was the fact that she won a literary prize. More recently, an article in the New Zealand Herald suggested that she may have had high functioning autism, which would seem a much more likely diagnosis. ( )