Posthumous Novel Palpably Alive

“In the Memorial Room is not just a brilliant novel but a considered and poignant posthumous literary act, a curtain call by one of the world’s greatest authors, New Zealander Janet Frame, who died in 2004. Frame did not allow this novel to be published in her lifetime,” writer and reviewer Angela Meyer writes for The Australian. “‘In authorship,’ the protagonist Harry Gill observes, ‘the author is not the tree scattering his books like leaves; the books are the tree; the author is shed, blown away, dies to make compost for other leaves and other trees.’ All Frame’s books are hearty, hardy trees. They should be visited often. It’s a delight to have this one revealed, standing strong and tall, palpably alive, alongside the others.” Frame died in 2004. She wrote 11 novels.