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emilyclairem 's review for:
Faces in the Water
by Janet Frame
First Read (July 4 2019) 3 stars
Frame's prose is incredibly beautiful and there were many passages that stopped me in my tracks with their brutal beauty and truth. I also really appreciated such a direct and honest look at institutions of the time which seemed to really hold nothing back. The negative impression of the institution as well as the theorized reasons behind these awful conditions came across very clearly, but without feeling like a non-fiction antipsychiatry text. I did feel like there was something missing from this text that I can't quite put my finger on. I'm not sure how to phrase this, but I think it's the way her day-to-day life was narrated there. There wasn't enough of a big picture perspective to get an idea of what her overall time there was like (i.e. it wasn't as frequently reflective as other texts on this subject), but there also wasn't enough detail about particular moments in time or her day-to-day life to feel realistic. It was somewhere between a macro and micro perspective, never really leaning strongly to one or other so that the end result was left feeling a bit blurred. I also thought it was a bit of an odd choice to offer none of Istina's backstory whatsoever. So overall I felt like something was a bit off about this work, but the prose is beautiful and the message was very important and well told.
Second read (July 19 2020) 4 stars
I enjoyed this more on the second read! It may be because I'm returning to this after having read her autobiography, An Angel at my Table, which details the context surrounding her institutionalization. While her lack of context in Faces in the Water is important to how she told her story, I'll admit that it made me feel in the dark while reading last week - which, I suppose, is part of the point. But it made for a more clear read having more information. And this time, the lack of information about her day to day actually added to the work for me, because so much of it must have been a blur and, in any case, not narrating it is part of the work's meaning. Frame has a unique way of storytelling where you feel both so intimately close to the language but so distant from the events and core of the story, it's a really intellectually stimulating read.
Frame's prose is incredibly beautiful and there were many passages that stopped me in my tracks with their brutal beauty and truth. I also really appreciated such a direct and honest look at institutions of the time which seemed to really hold nothing back. The negative impression of the institution as well as the theorized reasons behind these awful conditions came across very clearly, but without feeling like a non-fiction antipsychiatry text. I did feel like there was something missing from this text that I can't quite put my finger on. I'm not sure how to phrase this, but I think it's the way her day-to-day life was narrated there. There wasn't enough of a big picture perspective to get an idea of what her overall time there was like (i.e. it wasn't as frequently reflective as other texts on this subject), but there also wasn't enough detail about particular moments in time or her day-to-day life to feel realistic. It was somewhere between a macro and micro perspective, never really leaning strongly to one or other so that the end result was left feeling a bit blurred. I also thought it was a bit of an odd choice to offer none of Istina's backstory whatsoever. So overall I felt like something was a bit off about this work, but the prose is beautiful and the message was very important and well told.
Second read (July 19 2020) 4 stars
I enjoyed this more on the second read! It may be because I'm returning to this after having read her autobiography, An Angel at my Table, which details the context surrounding her institutionalization. While her lack of context in Faces in the Water is important to how she told her story, I'll admit that it made me feel in the dark while reading last week - which, I suppose, is part of the point. But it made for a more clear read having more information. And this time, the lack of information about her day to day actually added to the work for me, because so much of it must have been a blur and, in any case, not narrating it is part of the work's meaning. Frame has a unique way of storytelling where you feel both so intimately close to the language but so distant from the events and core of the story, it's a really intellectually stimulating read.