Thanks for the recommendation on the other book!
Another aspect which was autobiographical is that Janet Frame’s brother had epilepsy and two of her sisters died by drowning.
Quote AnotherCat
...It has also prompted me to look out Jane Mander's The Story of a New Zealand River written much earlier (1920) and has some reputation it being still in print.
I have now read
The Story of a New Zealand River and quite enjoyed it as well as thinking it well written. My only criticism is a just personal one, I felt the story was a bit drawn out for my taste but not enough to spoil the book.
So even though I have also now had a look at her 2 other better known novels which on the face of it do not look so good, I have to add Jane Mander to my very short list of what I regard as competent NZ novelists of literary standing .
Thank you for the update, AnotherCat! Another one to add to my TBR list.
In case you get to that end of your "to read" list , apart from the commercial ebook copies there is a free epub in the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection** and a passably good (from the little I checked) reading of it at LibraVox which I may listen to one day. And a yellow paged PDF at Archive.org.
**Unfortunately the NZETC uses TEI markup standards which result in messy and extravagantly built epubs, but are usable (however, I take the trouble to rebuild them to my own tidier versions if there is no other free source).
Thanks for the info, AnotherCat. Now I too want to read Jane Mander.
