Lindsea read and liked Tutti's review of Faces in the Water:

"Faces in the Water is technicolour. Language and imagery mercury fluid so as to immerse the reader into the compelling experience of Istina Mavet- incarcerated in a mental institution in New Zealand in the 1950’s for 8 years (as had the author Jane...more Faces in the Water is technicolour. Language and imagery mercury fluid so as to immerse the reader into the compelling experience of Istina Mavet- incarcerated in a mental institution in New Zealand in the 1950’s for 8 years (as had the author Janet Frame).
The book is geographically chartered by the senses, Izmet moves through the wards over her eight years as determined by the psychiatrists. The observation wards with brightly coloured décor – and one’s own clothes- the public face of the hospital, Ward Two with work roles and responsibilites, Ward Four- of day and night yowling, Ward Four-O-Five and the ‘Wire Dormitory’ where Istina feels one is ‘a witness to the origins of folklore’. Sometimes seemingly stepping forwards to release, other times seemingly resigned to a lifetime incarcerated. If this term does not already exist, I am going to indulge myself in using it. Psy-Fi- or really Psych-Fi.
An environment of petty and institutionaised brutality and cruelness where assertion is met with corrective’ measures and compliance is met ‘settling in’. Izmet appears to be highly perceptive, yet experiencing continual acutely disassosciating visions and possibly a large part a response to the acute terror of her surrounds and the ‘treatments’ seemingly randomly and punitively applied- E.C.T, Insulin treatment and the omnipresent threat of the then vogue of Leucotomy, and its ability to reform and change difficult behaviours- even if incurring incontinence and incomprehensible speech. The history and explorations of the leucotomy/ lobotomy are themselves a marcarbe reading of human endeavour – search of man as a scientifically orientated God. Frame herself was saved from undergoing a leucotomy at the eleventh hour- on the morning before Frame was due to be operated on, a hospital staff member had read that her writing had won the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of New Zealand’s most prestigious literary prizes.

Frame however does apply the compassionate touch of seeing the whole of the brutality of the environment as the de-humanised product of institutionalization, rather than particular to the nurses, characters she depicts. - which she does with acute incision into every aspect of the human personality.
The book is written, and the experiences had of pscyiatry and institutions at one of the many changing points. Several times Frame refers to the at times modernasitation of the hospital- however more in terms of attitudinal change, and superficial advancement. Reflecting back from now- the ful vogue swing of psycho-surgery which now seems primordial and outlawed savaging of the human brain. Frame describes the context of the few reading texts vailable to patients as “in spite of the gradual adoption of the ‘new’ attitude, the idea still prevailed that mental illness was a form of childish naughtiness which might be cured in a Victorian environment with the persuasion of ster speech and edifying literature.”

Faces in the Water seems to lie so closely to Frame’s own experiences of being incarcerated in Seacliffe Hospital for 8 years in New Zealand 1950’s after a misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia. Frame ends with an oblique line stating that she (or I suppose it is Istina) has been advised on release to forget her stay in hospital and all that she has seen and poses the question to the reader whether she has been true to this end.
The ending I found rather abrupt I found- maybe cursory- and more to the fact that one day the authoritarian note of the resident psychiatrist decrees that one is considered ‘sane’ enough to re-engage with society.
I forgot to mention the humour-sardonic funny.

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