557. Faces in the Water

Faces in the Water
Janet Frame
1961
Around 255 pages

This novel beat One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to the punch when it came to upsetting electroshock treatments. And our protagonist doesn't hate women, so that's another point to Frame.

Faces in the Water's narrative is clearly autobiographical; its details are too chilling to be secondhand. A woman is confined to a mental hospital in New Zealand. I feel like there are many different accounts of electroshock therapy. In stories like this, it's a gruesome practice inflicted on the unwilling. I've also read that Hollywood greatly exaggerated the horror of the procedure, although I guess it is entirely dependent on who is conducting the EST. In Frame's case, it really seems like torture. 

As always, I appreciate hearing from a corner of the world that the List generally doesn't spotlight. Of course, this book made New Zealand look like a nightmare, but I still appreciate it. Frame's real life story is inspirational; society deemed her a misfit, but she wrote her way out. 

Another female author sticking it to the man.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Following years of psychiatric hospitalization, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was canceled days before the procedure, after her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize.

UP NEXT: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein