SOURCE: "New Zealand," in World Literature Today, Vol. 59, No. 3, Summer, 1985, pp. 488-89.

In the review of An Angel at My Table below, McLeod criticizes the kind of autobiographical information Frame includes in her work.

Two years ago Janet Frame brought out the first volume, To the Is-Land, of her projected three-volume autobiography: that installment concluded with her departure from home for university and city life; the second one, An Angel at My Table, ends with her departure from New Zealand for England and continental life, thus chronicling almost fifteen years of social, psychological, and literary struggle in which she was judged schizophrenic (and almost lobotomized), was adjudged winner of a small literary prize, and was adjudicated worthy of government support as a promising writer. Though she takes pains to deny her mental abnormality, she also takes pains to stress her insecurity at placing coins in a telephone, picking...