In the Memorial Room

In the Memorial Room is a brilliant black comedy, by the celebrated author of An Angel at My Table.

Harry Gill, a moderately successful writer of historical fiction, has been awarded the annual Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship—a ‘living memorial’ to the poet Margaret Rose Hurndell. He arrives in the French Riviera town of Menton, where Hurndell once lived and worked, to write. But the Memorial Room is not suitable—it has no electricity or water. Hurndell never wrote here, though it is expected of Harry.

Janet Frame’s previously unpublished novel draws on her own experiences in Menton, in the south of France as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow. It is a wonderful social satire, a send-up of the cult of the dead author, and—in the best tradition of Frame—a fascinating exploration of the complexity and the beauty of language.

Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most highly acclaimed author, was born in Dunedin in 1924 and died in 2004. Her first book, The Lagoon and Other Stories, was published in 1952. Frame went on to publish eleven novels, another three short-story collections and a book of poetry during her lifetime, and another novel, a short-story collection and a book of her poems have been published since her death. Janet Frame received numerous awards for her work, including a CBE for services to literature, in 1983. In 1990, she was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand. In that year, the three volumes of her autobiography were made into the film An Angel at My Table.

In 1973, Janet Frame was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and she spent the following year in Menton on the Côte d’Azur. Beneath the villa Isola Bella, where Mansfield lived and wrote for a time, is the Memorial Room, a small stone room commemorating her work and given to the Mansfield Fellow as a place to write. Though she struggled to work in the difficult conditions of the Memorial Room—with no running water or toilet facilities and delays in receiving her fellowship payment— it was in Menton that Janet Frame wrote In the Memorial Room, the story of Harry Gill, writer and recipient of the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship.

Frame did not allow publication of the manuscript during her lifetime—would certain people see themselves in the characters portrayed and, finding unflattering portraits, be offended? But she always intended the novel to be published posthumously, at the right time. Tucked away, to be looked at later, the Menton novel waited while Frame went on to write Living in the Maniototo, a novel interlaced with some of the same characters, events and places.

'In the Memorial Room is filled with terrifyingly beautiful reflections on how writing books (and even reading them) can feel like digging your own grave. It also serves as a sly warning to those of us who obsessively cherish the works of dead writers - even writers as good as Janet Frame. Watch out! The death you memorialize may well be your own.' New York Times Book Review

'[In the Memorial Room] is a formidable work. It is also amusing, satirical, poetic and provocative - a real joy to read.' Sunday Star Times

'Reading this is like finding an unwrapped gift long-hidden at the back of the wardrobe. The novel is quite unlike anything else Frame penned, yet she is recognisable in every pore of every sentence and of every word. Her love of language is infectious and so, too, is her sense of humour.' NZ Herald

'A deliciously mischievous piece of fun, this is sharp social satire, ruthless in its mockery of literary pretension.' Caroline Baum, Booktopia