A haunting and tragic book about small-town New Zealand. I read most of it in one sitting, and actually cried real tears at the end. For that reason alone I feel obligated to give it five stars.

I did find some of Daphne's earlier scenes hard to follow. The ECT scene with all the patients "waiting in crocodile" and the crocodile becoming some sort of extended metaphor (?) I didn't really get.

Her later scenes on the other hand are really very good and give a great angle on how Daphne's "insanity" makes perfect sense from her point of view. ( )

The interesting aspect of this book is its bringing of poetry into prose. I mean, the prose is more poetic than Alan Curnow's (prose) poems, not that that's saying much. Oh, and it doesn't work.

There is a clearness to the underlying story lines, even though the plot (of which there is effectively none) doesn't work. A real mis-mash. Like piles of windows, doors, wood, carpet, nails lying there, hinting of the great house that could have been built.... and hasn't been.

( )

An unsettling and utterly original work of genius, Owls Do Cry heralded the arrival of Janet Frame on the international literary scene and kicked off a period of staggering creativity in which she would publish nine novels in fifteen years. Owls Do Cry chronicles the lives of the Withers siblings, Daphne, Chicks (Teresa), Toby and Francie. Growing up in coastal Waimaru (based on Frame’s home town of Oamaru), the children are raised by their well-meaning, unsophisticated parents in a home with few luxuries and in a time and place where Toby’s epileptic seizures are considered shameful and frightening and a sign of weakness. The first part of the novel tells of their fascination with the local rubbish dump, where they often go to search for treasure, and ends with a tragic accident. Subsequent sections take place “twenty years after” and follow the three remaining Withers siblings as they suffer setbacks and struggle to remain connected and yet establish independent identities and lives of their own. Most powerful is the section on Daphne, who has been committed to a mental institution and regards her surroundings through a drugged and fragmented haze. The reality of these scenes is fluid and hard to nail down—hospital staff are monsters, a wall is a mountain—but it is in this section that Frame’s prose and narrative imagery achieve the vivid and poetic heights for which she was to become famous. One cannot help reading Daphne’s scenes through the prism of what we know of the author’s life: her own institutionalization and narrow escape from brain surgery as psychiatric therapy. Though there are flashes of humour, the prevailing tone of the novel is tragic, and yet one reaches the end with a sense that hope is not entirely lost. In 1957, Owls Do Cry appeared without literary antecedents, leaving critics of the time with virtually no points of comparison. Sixty years later it remains a deeply affecting work of startling originality. The courage of its author, one of the most daring stylists of twentieth-century English prose, is undeniable. ( )

A well-written novel that makes much use of stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and multiple points of view. Fiction on an autobiographical base, Owls Do Cry focuses symbolically on finding self-defined and personally-recognized treasures in the rubbish. Psychologically realistic and deeply sad, it is always engaging and frequently moving.

This audio edition, which appears to be the 50th anniversary publication, includes several brief essays on Frame's life and work as well. ( )

Oh, the futility of life...where the "sane" partake of what appears to be the nectar of life and the "insane" are sadly dispossessed - but perhaps nearer to the truth.

This book follows a poverty stricken family in New Zealand but could have been anywhere on earth. All family members lead individually distinct emotional lives and Janet Frame takes the reader on an exploration of the intimate musings of each. As crowded together physically and economically as they are, there is a vast distance separating them.

It occurred to me that perhaps you have to be a bit crazy to understand this book... I just might be...
I really liked this one! Very sad but insightful. ( )