An Angel at My Table
This is the second volume in Janet Frame's autobiography, in which New Zealand's most distinguished living novelist tells of how she left the close-knit family home in Oamaru for teacher training college in Dunedin. Her college years were a time of intense loneliness that culminated in an attempted suicide and commital to a mental institution. Labelled as a schizophrenic, Janet spent eight harrowing years in psychiatric hospitals until the publication of her prizewinning collection of stories won her a discharge.