Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Owls Do Cry

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 432 ratings · 41 reviews

Recipient of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989, Janet Frame has long been admired for her startlingly original prose and formidable imagination. A native of New Zealand, she is the author of eleven novels, four collections of stories, a volume of poetry, a children's book, and her heartfelt and courageous autobiography -- all published by George Braziller....more

Paperback, 210 pages

Published March 1st 1982 by George Braziller (first published 1958)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Books By New Zealand Authors

21st out of 380 books — 141 voters

Feminista's 100 Great 20th Century Works of Fiction by Women

47th out of 100 books — 46 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 878)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Oct 30, 2012 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: if chemistry could silence the lion's laugh I'd be fine

Recommended to Mariel by: I don't know hell but I've read about it often

You would think this night that the world sated with blossom and love and death would finish and there would be no memory of it anywhere, save perhaps on a cave wall of new time, where the posturing figures dance unseen their stillness of clay or chalk or stone.
You would think all this on a spring night.
Except the thinking is not real.

The feeling I had a lot when reading Owls Do Cry was of looking out of the corner of your eye. When looking at it full on whatever you expected to see was not ther...more You would think this night that the world sated with blossom and love and death would finish and there would be no memory of it anywhere, save perhaps on a cave wall of new time, where the posturing figures dance unseen their stillness of clay or chalk or stone.
You would think all this on a spring night.
Except the thinking is not real.

The feeling I had a lot when reading Owls Do Cry was of looking out of the corner of your eye. When looking at it full on whatever you expected to see was not there. If there's an astigmatism version for rose coloured glasses then it would be this family the Withers. Family and society mean fuck all for the look are the glasses. I wasn't surprised when the brother Toby reads his little sister's diary during a visit only to be startled into feeling shame when he comes across the pages about himself. I had been thinking about walking across your own grave before then. I don't think it was because he saw in handwriting that he had his mother wait on her own bread bone dry and it's not butter it's margarine (that he bullies her with further poverty with threats of pulling his shares out of the home that he owns with his parents made ME ashamed). Toby had self-awareness of the kind that sees what he expects to see when he slithers into another's eye frames. The kind of weasel you would expect to learn has a dating website profile lamenting that hot girls don't like nice guys and honestly, that's why he goes out of his way to make everyone's life hard in those little ways that add up to blind sided bad days. Greasy-haired, never had a girl, is he going to have one of his "fits" again. He just knows they don't like him, rather than expect better of himself. I SHOULD help my mother , he'd think. His fits are epilepsy, I think. If he had been female he would have ended up under the hot lamp suspect gaze with no phone calls or a glass of water, please. Under the knife and under the stars if all of your ancestors are really judging you. That was his sister Daphne's fate. Toby counts his money like he was the little brother from The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (great book). Coins over the eyelids long before you're dead is one way of living as if you already are. I had the feeling about this family that they were living the "When you get old I'm going to put you in a home!" threat from day one. It's a bitter unwhimpered threat. It is only funny if it is The Golden Girls and you can burn the place down with a hot plate. While Daphne is rotting away in the horror land version of Shady Pines, is that the dying sun reflecting off the you could see your reflection in it is so dirty from a lifetime of sweat and twisted worry dome of Bob Withers over there, you know, where the chicken died crossing the road? I don't know who sprung for the home in this gasping punchline of an ending. The joke isn't funny anymore (this time I'll get it in early that Janet Frame has the comic touch of I don't know if I'm crying or I'm laughing). The "normal" one, please don't call her Chicks anymore her name is TERESA, dead in a murder-suicide. Gotta keep up with the I-married-a-doctor-and-he-broke-both-his-vows-of-marriage-and-the-medical-board couple. She would have been the sort who would make sure you got her husbands title correct so I don't feel bad about my load of hyphens just there. If she could write about it after she died she probably wouldn't have minded that they were trendy. I wonder what Janet Frame would have made of the materialism of today if 1950s New Zealand cocked her brow? I can't see Toby springing for the fees for his father's home. It was probably the lobotomized Daphne in her on the way up factory supervising job. Or the institutional version of the unmarked pothole. Eldest sister Francie died in a freak accident. I am not sure how she burned to death. She rolled out of the pages and into the fires. She was kicking a leg in the mirror. She was whispering secrets that Daphne would always be too young to know, at least not without the so-called benefits of may I have the scalpel, please. She was too old for trips to the local dumpster for treasures. Chicks was running behind with sand in her shoes at the promise of aniseed cakes. Dad wanted to burn Francie's scandalous pants that signified that she was a loose girl. What will people say? After her death he burns those pants in secret. This was a moment that stood out to me as if a girl who was brutally dumped by her boyfriend bonfires every I love you beary much memory in retaliation and promptly regrets it in case they get back together. Was Francie really dead to them? I had the feeling that Toby was always reading Teresa's diary and running away in the night to avoid that exorcist head spin at their family. Remember when we called her Chicks because she looked like a chicken with hair swinging in her face, pointing at the ground as if she could pick up leftover grains of secrets that are only good when you're too young to know them? Teresa is the run away and be too good for your family sister. I don't know if anyone reading this has that kind of family. It was the much vocalized dream in mine. Hearing this has a special way of making you feel as if you had never had a family. If you wonder why YOU aren't also good enough to leave that is another way of losing it. I think that's what Toby probably asked himself every time he thought about Teresa and her house up north. I was interested in how Janet Frame saw that dream. Young Daphne puts her sister on a wicked witch of the west path in the cyclone trail on her bicycle to and fro from a factory job. Once upon a time I looked on a different New Zealand story, the film Heavenly Creatures, for my inner held up image for the horror romance. Teen murderesses scream with delight when their beloved ugly Orson Welles "chases" them in their fantasies. This movie made teenage me very happy because of that scene. Movies don't make me that happy anymore. Sure, there are some stories that spark my mind to go "Oh, this means that" (Claire Danes playing a bipolar character on series Homeland is a recent favorite. I'm not saying I can't get something out of good stories). I don't know if I haven't had the knack of finding the good ones like I used to, or maybe my standards are too high. I feel like the present and stretched out future is for them like that. To feel a shadow of that thrill, it has to come from memories (distorted or no) of the past. Daphne's spinning of "this means that" for a world she doesn't see the way a person who dreams of getting out as soon as they can felt like that reveling in the horror pleasure. I guess how else could you cope if that was your option. Backbreaking work until death. Little did she know what awaited her was much worse. I am horror fascinated by that her method of living with the world made it unlivable for her. Doors shut on the outside as the windows in the mind open like seeing a picture of yourself looking into a mirror. The Withers return to the mind boggling sudden death of Francie as a furnace of their own dreams if it worked as a time stands still trick for Daphne. If they ever read someone else's account of their poverty, or had to ride back to forth to the factory without kaleidoscopic colors of wool. In the fairy tales you could sacrifice your first born child for this. Well, Daphne was locked up for the poetic license she takes with her own life. They take it away from her. I had a feeling of a longing to return to before Francie had died. I couldn't call how Toby and Teresa see the world as poetic anything. It would be like overhearing someone else say the kind of critical things you would say to yourself if you are the sort of person who feels awful about bad hair days. If there was ever going to be a language that made sense of them as a whole it probably wouldn't be that kind. There's a before and after Francie. Funny, she was going to leave them too, as Teresa does. Mom and dad never had any money. They would write about them in their own diaries as figures who yell at them. There would probably be a page about having to do chores. A lot about wanting to live their own lives not as a family. Teresa thinks about where Daphne is shut and means to send her a tin of biscuits. That wasn't that different than Toby's longed for pleasure of finding out what the next flavor was going to be in a type of candy much like Life-savers. It probably wasn't as sweet as when they were kids and got those aniseed cakes (which sounded much like something my birds like to eat). If only Toby hadn't fled in the night when he read a diary never intended for him to read. Teresa's suburban life wasn't seen with the same warm kitchen lights as the one in Frame's Towards Another Summer. I had liked that book better for that, that it wasn't a win or lose life thing to have "it all" of a family versus being alone and not settled in if you were happy with that or not. I don't mind here that it's a loss because I don't think it was really about who saved themselves or not. The loss is in the meaning of it all. Why even have family? The feeling I have had all three times reading Janet Frame is that the only way to save yourself is to try and have as many kinds of looks that you can get. The stolen diary feeling isn't a pleasant feeling to have. I felt like Toby when he is dismissed. I had felt sorry for him when the girl he hardly admits to being in love with him is married to another man. She laughs at him for believing a childhood story about factory girls and a strap. I felt something else for him when another pleasure he gets out of his life is withholding the sports page from the newspaper from his father. These kids wouldn't ever get over that childhood slight, would they? I wonder what the point of moving away from the family you were born into and starting another one is if that is how it is always going to go. It's the home for you! Here, have a biscuit tin. Janet Frame was wonderful with the familial poetical strains carrying over through the kids. Daphne listened willingly. Toby has nightmares that his sisters are Shakespearean witches. Teresa silences herself in her diary. Toby at least pieces together how his mother pulled her view of the world from newspaper headlines read aloud to her from her husband. When Daphne writes something similar (I wonder where she heard it from) her sister only wonders that the nurses allowed her to send such a letter in the first place. What happened to this family?

Their mother sang a song to her children that went like this:
Come in you naughty bird
the rain is pouring down
what would your mother say
if you stay there and drown?
You are a very naughty bird
you do not think of me,
I'm sure I do not care,
said the sparrow on the tree

Frame wrote that she "half-wailing it so that it seemed tragic and terrible". Damn. Guilt trip for her kids, sure. But for a family that epitomizes "You don't call, you don't write"... I thought that was great. I read a review online that the character marginalized to the detriment of the story was the mother. I don't agree. I think she takes her place in that family and then doesn't take it, same as everyone else.

People could say that Janet Frame wrote similar books because of the autobiographical content. Like Daphne, she was locked away in an institution and scheduled for a lobotomy herself. Her family was poor. I read a goodreads review from a friend on here about another author not too long ago that she wrote the same book every time and I didn't agree with that either. Jean Rhys books read to me like interlocking pieces of the same puzzle. Janet Frame is something else. If you have ever struggled with a crushing weight on your own shoulders that was sometimes shifted to your heart, or maybe your brain, and you could trick yourself into thinking it was gone with stories you tell yourself? You would catch your own reflection and what you expected to see there wasn't what you saw anymore. Her books read like that to me (I've only read three so far. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass). Society is fucked up. Maybe it isn't that bad because there is a light coming out of these bridges that I can cross with some help. Is the ending of Owls Do Cry the subverted image of what you expect to see, what with the mentalist Daphne making the dough? Those who got out dug themselves in the pot holes (society loves parking lots). I feel it's sad and angry. Faces in the Water was kinder towards the lashers than I had inside of me because I was too angry that society doesn't ask of itself to be better than that. So the mom was going to die anyway. That was going to be her end no matter what. But why did she have children to live like that? Tell yourself I don't care, why is my son so cruel, that's how it goes. So their neighbors read about this stuff happening to all of these people. Anyone we know? I guess they didn't expect to see these people in the paper. They all had their places. Toby's sorta love who married that social security clerk who had been embezzling all the time. I missed the old Daphne who saw their ominous faces peeking out of the sides of Mt. Rushmore. Oh wait, that's me. I'm trying to reconcile historical expectations with it never happened so let's just give up. Oh wait, that's what they did. I'm stuck on Daphne getting locked up because her mind played tricks on her that it wasn't all the town dump and dad yelling at mom about money. Owls Do Cry is the it is freaking hard book. Poetry isn't going to save you this time.

Damn, but I do feel bad about that save yourself drive. I would think Frame would see it from both sides of the lonely socket. Somehow that isn't as consoling to me this time. I've seen where Daphne goes...

And the mill girls going on bicycles, chased by the south wind to their rooms of blindness; but not here, Daphne, here at the hour of the hooter, the door outside the mountain hovel is unlocked, some other door of a brick house holding the idiots and maimed and the dwarves with their crepe faces and parchment eyes, and these people move into the yard; they jabber, jibber and are quiet; they know what you say to them; they know, they are understanding, so they must work; and off they skip and limp and crawl, with bundles of soiled clothes under their arm to the laundry; all day with the hiss of steam like snakes in their ears; ironing, folding, hanging out the clothes; feeding and being crushed, their heads and the bones in their heads, under the mangle that is time, taking the sheets of earth they lie between and the pillow-cases of dream they rest their hearts on.(less)

13 likes · like · see review

Jan 28, 2009 Lanea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, women-writers

Janet Frame is another one of those authors whose books I ration. I discovered Frame's work after I fell for Jane Campion's work. The Piano led to An Angel at My Table, which was based on Frame's autobiography of the same name and some of her other work. Frame died a few years ago after a life of tragedy, astounding accomplishments, and gorgeous writing. Some writers wish they would write like Dickinson or Faulkner or Shakespeare . . . I wish I could write like Frame.

Owls Do Cry was Frame's fir...more

6 likes · like · see review

Jun 11, 2011 Ensiform rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The children of a poor family in New Zealand, the Withers, spend their days searching through rubbish heaps for childish treasures, fearing and suspicious of much (their hard-working, simple father, the nurse at school, the day when they must go face the factories and mills of the adult world). After the eldest girl dies horrifically, the book jumps twenty years ahead: we now see that the youngest is married and trying, poorly, to get on in higher society; Daphne is mute and in a grim mental ins...more The children of a poor family in New Zealand, the Withers, spend their days searching through rubbish heaps for childish treasures, fearing and suspicious of much (their hard-working, simple father, the nurse at school, the day when they must go face the factories and mills of the adult world). After the eldest girl dies horrifically, the book jumps twenty years ahead: we now see that the youngest is married and trying, poorly, to get on in higher society; Daphne is mute and in a grim mental institution staffed by pushy attendants and smiling, clueless doctors, getting ECT; and Toby is a slightly mentally off (“a shingle short,” as the book has it, in Australian slang) epileptic who works as some sort of scrap dealer. He lives at home, is unnoticed by women, and cannot empathize with his long-sacrificing parents.

I read this book as part of a project in which strangers dictated online what books I should read. This is a good example of the kind of book that I would probably not, left to my own devices, decide to read. The literary world is strewn with examples of the child, child-like, or free-association narrator (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Room, Riddley Walker, Thy Servant a Dog), and while I've enjoyed some of these, I often find the style more laborious than it is worth the literary payoff. Frame occasionally expresses Daphne’s disjointed observations through blank verse, a bit too abstruse for my tastes --- perhaps a bit too close to an actual schizophrenic look at the world. It’s a fully autobiographical novel: Frame was one of five children, two of whom died, one of whom was epileptic, and she spent time in a mental institution, even being scheduled for a lobotomy at one point. Given its utterly, thoroughly bleak tone, this makes for uncomfortable reading --- and criticizing; what can one say, really, about the madness of this grim life? Frame is a good prose stylist with some clever imagery at her disposal and is capable of writing very much from the point of view of a child. She also has that power of the novelist, to put herself in the lives of minor characters (but again, it’s unrelentingly grim, as we see the nurse push away her loneliness and poor self-image, to blossom only through the petty power she has in the asylum). And I’m exceedingly glad Frame's literary talents saved her from the madhouse. But I’m not sure I’m better for having read this novel of poverty, isolation, murderers, lack of understanding, and the crushing indifference of everyone.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 28, 2012 Julianne Quaine rated it 5 of 5 stars

First Janet frame book after reading An Angel at my Table. although supposedly not autobiographical It bears significant resemblance to Janet's upbringing and family life. The scenes in Seacliff are very disturbing and one hopes we have improved our management of people tortured by mental illness. It has a distinct NZ flavour. I bought the book in Janet Frame's childhood home in Omarau, south of Christchurch while on holiday there, visiting Omarau because I was reading An Angel at my Table. Wha...more

like · see review

Jun 06, 2009 Debbie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Janet Frame book I have ever read so her writing took some getting used to at first - she has her own style which is kind of semi-stream-of-consciousness. She uses punctuation in a very interesting way and some sentences call for a re-read. Once you get the hang of it you realise how rich, deep and beautifully poetic her writing is.

The book is based in 1950s New Zealand and follows the story of one family from Dunedin in the South Island, and goes in-depth into the characters o...more

5 likes · like · see review

Dec 03, 2009 Jade McDonough rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended by my grandma and sitting on my bookshelf for years, so we'll see? <-------before reading
After reading -------->
Ever read one of those books that is too metaphoric for it's own good? This is it. Once I finally figured out what was going on I liked it. But it took awhile to figure out what that was with so much of it being buried in vagueness. I also generally don't like walking away from a book feeling like nothing really happened. No characters really progressed or changed or...more

like · see review

Apr 30, 2012 Karen Heart rated it 4 of 5 stars

I decided I just had to read a Janet Frame novel after seeing the film An Angel at My Table, which is based on Janet Frame's life. I am glad I did and I am glad I saw the movie first because it gave me so much more insight into her world and (I believe) much more understanding about what was happening with the characters in the book.

It is a unique book in how the story is told and presented. It has moments of poetry that flow seamlessly into a story, then flow back into poetry again. This flowin...more

like · see review

Apr 18, 2010 Reenie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: new-zealand, female-author

Janet Frame's first novel gets you right from the first chapter, just from the way she uses words. I went back and read that over a couple of times before going on, just because the rhythm and the sound of the words rolled around nicely.

Overall, I think it was the language and writing most of all that appeals in this book, although there are also moments where bits and pieces of a character are neatly skewered and laid out for understanding that were great. The epilogue might have been a little...more

like · see review

Jan 18, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-ll-read-it-again

Starting on page one... "The Day is early with birds beginning and the wren in a cloud piping like the child in the poem, drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe..." this book knocked the wind out of me, and did so on more than one occasion...I couldn't put it down, but forced myself to so I could absorb it in small bites...most definitely a "read it again someday" book. My copy is dog-eared with favorite bits, in some cases, if the bits spilled over to the next page, I dog-eared the bottom corner to indi...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 13, 2009 Nicholas Cavenagh rated it 3 of 5 stars

Owls Do Cry is loosely based on Frame's childhood and family. This novel is as much poetry as it is prose. It is a challenging read but there are certainly some sublime passages. My main fault with it was that Frame was unconvincing writing in third person as the snobbish sister (in the form of a diary)- it came across as a little cliched and unconvincing. Apart from this it is a bold effort to describe the world that is within us but slightly beyond us - the world in which owls do cry.

like · see review

May 30, 2011 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: new-zealand, audio-book, 20th-century, library-book-or-loan

Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame’s first full-length novel and was hailed as a critical success from the start. First published in 1957 and recently reissued in a 50th anniversary edition (on which this audio book is based), it is the tragic story of the Withers family, from a small town in New Zealand.

The first chapters about the poverty-stricken childhood of Francie, Daphne, Toby and ‘Chicks’ will bring a lump to the throat for most readers. The descriptions of how the ‘dirty’ children are treated...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 03, 2012 Clare rated it 4 of 5 stars

You just need to get a taste of Frame's lyricism to appreciate her sensitive virtuosity. Even without considering meaning the words have a compulsive beat and draw to them - "The day is early with birds beginning and the wren is a cloud piping like the child in the poem, drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe...." There. Did you need any more?

like · see review

Jan 13, 2011 Alan Wightman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Had some good moments, and some quite scary ones, particularly descriptions of operations in the asylum. Some of it written in poetry, and the whole thing is intensively autobiographical, being mainly about Frame's family.

I got this from the stack - "out the back" at the Upper Hutt Public Library. This copy was, I think, a first edition (1957)

like · see review

May 16, 2011 Mimi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This is a heartbreaking account of tragedy and alienation, but it takes a human scale. Frame's writing is elliptical and poetic, and the story by turns emerges from and dissolves back into her description of the emotional and physical worlds of her characters. She exposes the vulnerability of every character in a way that is both raw and compassionate. Every character--no matter how brief their appearance in the story--struggles with the tremendous weight of their existence in a different way. T...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 16, 2009 Emily added it

This is why I get mad at the publishing industry sometimes. This book should be a classic--it's up there w. such stream of conciousness toucstones as Ulysses and To the lighthouse--the most fascinating language and steeliest eye, clever motifs and full of well earned heart ache though never sentimental

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 05, 2012 Deb Hale is currently reading it

I started this book years ago and never finished it. I think it's time to return to it. Meantime, please check out my blog -- readingwithdebra.blogspot.com -- for my posting on Anna Quindlen's newest book, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake.

like · see review

Dec 27, 2009 shirley rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish

I tried to finish this book but I had to give up, it was a real chore. I read things because I enjoy them but this felt like I was back at school and had to read it. I admit that it does seem to be an interesting story and I agree with a lot of other people that it is written in a very poetic way but it was just far too hard for me.

like · see review

Sep 25, 2011 Andrea (mrsaubergine) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nz-authors

"The clock is time, and time is lost, is bankrupt before it begins." Heartbreaking and quite brilliant - but I didn't appreciate it at the time.

like · see review

Apr 28, 2010 Ann Crites marked it as to-read

would also like to read her 3 volume autobiography as well as her other novels. saw the biopic some time ago...so fascinating.

like · see review

Aug 11, 2011 Ruth Brittain added it

Disturbing but beautifully constructed.....writing that is never forgotten....Janet Frame was a genius.....

like · see review

Dec 08, 2012 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nz-fiction

Just so poetic - wonderful. The book I am most pleased I was made to read at University

like · see review

Nov 27, 2009 Joshuaburkett added it

best book i've read this year...amazing first novel. surprising & killer

like · see review

Jun 03, 2012 Jane Harris added it

Have started this book SOOOO many times...I'm a bad, bad girl.

like · see review

Jul 09, 2010 Laura Menear added it

I am very intrigued by this writer.

like · see review

Jun 13, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose-poetry, things-you-can-t-unsee

This is genius writing. And, beautiful. And, brave.
It's a bit squeamish-making, which is why I'm not putting this on my "favorites" shelf, but I vehemently recommend it, nevertheless.

If you haven't seen An Angel at My Table, the film about Janet Frame's life, I recommend that as well.

Thank you, again, Jo!

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 01, 2009 Sashka rated it 4 of 5 stars

Heartbreaking.

like · see review

May 07, 2011 Natalie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good read!

like · see review

Feb 21, 2012 Osho rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

A well-written novel that makes much use of stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and multiple points of view. Fiction on an autobiographical base, Owls Do Cry focuses symbolically on finding self-defined and personally-recognized treasures in the rubbish. Psychologically realistic and deeply sad, it is always engaging and frequently moving.

This audio edition, which appears to be the 50th anniversary publication, includes several brief essays on Frame's life and work as well.

like · see review

Jun 30, 2012 Myfanwy rated it 5 of 5 stars

In preparation for the next http://deadwritersbookgroup.wordpress... on Monday, July 2nd.

like · see review

Jan 22, 2008 Libby rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was fascinating to read Janet's first novel, esp. since I had read her autobiography and knew a little bit about when and where she wrote it. Overall, the book seems uneven to me, and I felt bad about the way the main character treated her sister in the book, as if she was an automaton, but there are some stunning lyrical passages.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 29 30 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (20)

More editions...

Genres

Literary Fiction

4 users

Novels

3 users

Female Authors

2 users

Literature

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

In My Father's Den
by Maurice Gee
The Penguin History of New Zealand
by Michael King
Potiki
by Patricia Grace
Mouthing the Words
by Camilla Gibb
Once Were Warriors
by Alan Duff

About Janet Frame

The fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. The story of her alm...more

More about Janet Frame...

Books by Janet Frame

An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #2)

Janet Frame: An Autobiography; Volume One : To the Is-Land, Volume Two : An Angel at My Table, Volume Three : The Envoy from Mirror City/ 3 Volumes

To the Is-land: An Autobiography (Autobiography, #1)

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Owls Do Cry

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Owls Do Cry

“She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out.” — 3 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Owls Do Cry
avg rating	preview: Owls Do Cry Goodreads rating: 4.07 (432 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/895005.Owls_Do_Cry?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1300484577l/895005.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/895005.Owls_Do_Cry?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame[/url]

Owls Do Cry

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website