Janet Frame

Paul Matthew St. Pierre reads the early fiction of New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924-2004) through semiotics, the study of signs, and biosemiotics, which applies the same ideas to the nervous system. His focus is four books: the story collection The Lagoon (1951), Owls Do Cry (1957), Faces in the Water (1961) and The Edge of the Alphabet (1962).

The book challenges the common view that these novels are autobiographical, a view shaped by Frame's medical history. St. Pierre argues instead that they are original works of imagination. He wants to correct the critical record and offer a different way of interpreting a writer whose style is demanding and rewarding in equal measure.

His argument runs through language, the transmission of signs, the writing of the body and the biosemiotic self, and it carries over into Frame's later work. The result is a combative, theory-driven study aimed at readers of literary criticism.