'Schweblin uses successive crises as a means to break open her characters’ mechanical routines and force them to locate raw feelings.' Lucie Elven: Finding the soul beneath the skin

‘David Lynch had a peculiarly subtractive aesthetic. Just as the more you see, the less comprehensible it becomes, the less you can see (the lower the lighting, the poorer the quality) the more there is to look for.’ Ruby Hamilton on the filmmaker: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Likely, he won’t come to her anymore, despite the fact that she has avoided any ethical question and thinks there is no need for them to be led into a discussion of the difference between, say, truthfulness and truth.’ Read a new story by Diane Williams: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘As J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she criss-crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of rare manuscripts to add to his collection, outbidding and outsmarting rivals wherever she went.’ Francesca Wade on Belle da Costa Greene: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Books have arrived @prototypepubs.bsky.social HQ, out 29 May prototypepublishing.co.uk

‘Frame hated noise. She claimed that her street became too loud when, after Macmillan came to power, the residents had the money to buy TVs and record players, though she herself blasted out Schubert to disguise her illicit typing when her landlord was sleeping.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’ @lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’ @lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Nathan Dragon's collection The Champ is Here sounds really interesting - in a peak NOON way I'd say :) - if you're not convinced by Lucie Elven's lovely review, there's some samples available at nathandragon.com

I loved making a guest appearance on Rachel’s substack to write about (and recommend) Nathan Dragon’s beautiful short story collection, The Champ Is Here. open.substack.com/pub/rachelco...

I’m talking to Vijay Khurana about his extremely tense and impressive novel THE PASSENGER SEAT (Peninsula) on Thursday 22 May at @burleyfisher.bsky.social. It’s the London launch. Free tickets! burleyfisherbooks.com/products/lau...

‘Janet Frame’s writing is often compared to Faulkner’s, and her family history reads like a Southern Gothic novel. Yet Frame can be an extraordinarily cheerful, funny writer. Language was a source of continual revelation.’ @lucieelven.bsky.social on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’ @lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

As a gift, she bought him silkworms, which they kept in a shoebox. Frame picked mulberry leaves for the worms to eat and ‘in the silence of the night as I lay in bed I heard a sound like the turning of tiny pages in a tiny library ... the sound of steady chewing and chomping.’

I love this essay from Rachel Connolly about her friendship with the painter Felix Higham

Wouldn’t you like to be normal? www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

#booksky for #womenwriters 📚💙 A beautiful, wondrous & deeply thoughtful essay about Janet Frame, her key works and life; she was one of the most remarkable, accomplished memoirists (Angel at My Table), novelists, & story writers of the 20th century. By Lucie Elven, novelist. archive.is/W65Zp

‘Janet Frame’s writing is often compared to Faulkner’s, and her family history reads like a Southern Gothic novel. Yet Frame can be an extraordinarily cheerful, funny writer. Language was a source of continual revelation.’ @lucieelven.bsky.social on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Before the second volume of her autobiography was even published, Janet Frame was being called a neglected genius, recommended for the Nobel Prize, awarded a CBE (she would have preferred to be styled Dame Frame, but “that’s my wack”).’ Lucie Elven on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Frame’s letters were opened by the doctors, who deemed them “foolish”. A line about gorse smelling of peanut butter was singled out as a sign of her disordered mind and reason enough to prevent contact with the outside world for a time.‘ Lucie Elven on Janet Frame: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Great review this

Janet Frame was just days away from a scheduled lobotomy when her first story collection won a New Zealand national literary award, convincing her doctors to cancel the procedure.

‘Frame’s letters were opened by the doctors, who deemed them “foolish”. A line about gorse smelling of peanut butter was singled out as a sign of her disordered mind and reason enough to prevent contact with the outside world for a time.‘ Lucie Elven on Janet Frame: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Issue 47.08 is now online, featuring: Alan Hollinghurst on 1950s gay London Anne Enright @thewrengirl.bsky.social on Helen Garner Julian Barnes on the collector Albert Barnes Andrew O’Hagan on hologram concerts Lucie Elven on Janet Frame and a cover by Naomi Frears. Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

‘Before the second volume of her autobiography was even published, Janet Frame was being called a neglected genius, recommended for the Nobel Prize, awarded a CBE (she would have preferred to be styled Dame Frame, but “that’s my wack”).’ Lucie Elven on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

❤️ Janet Frame

Given the republication of The Edge of the Alphabet (@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social), I wrote about the brilliant Janet Frame for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I started reading this yesterday it's a long read but a good one. So often women's quirks and creativity have been pathologised. A fascinating read about writer Janet Frame below ⬇️

Good to Janet Frame discussed in LRB today. She should be required reading, in conversation Foucault, on any sociology of mental health class. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

🙏🙏 www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Wonderful non-paywalled piece on New Zealand writer Janet Frame #lrb #writing #janetframe www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Astonishingly beautiful tribute and paean to the life, work, pain and euphoria of the #photographer and #filmmaker Nan Goldin, by Lucie Elven in @londonreview.bsky.social Goldin's current retrospective is titled 'This Will Not End Well' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Frame’s letters were opened by the doctors, who deemed them “foolish”. A line about gorse smelling of peanut butter was singled out as a sign of her disordered mind and reason enough to prevent contact with the outside world for a time.‘ Lucie Elven on Janet Frame: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...