Kate Figes’ introduction mentions “The Reservoir” by Janet Frame as a good story about “childhood fears and fantasies,” of the specific sort in which the child decides to transgress. Since I read that, I’ve decided to begin my course on women’s literature on the theme of childhood, which I will say is the story of the person’s first cultural clash: the experience of their own.
Sadly, “The Reservoir” breaks Elmore Leonard’s summary rule: it sounds like writing. The story evokes the New Zealand of the author’s childhood, an idyllic place with hidden dangers as various as sharks and infantile paralysis. The two aspects of New Zealand life, beauty and danger, are symbolized in the local reservoir, which is a good place for a snog but also a place where several children have drowned. The narrator and her friends visit, and return home. It is not as thrilling as the writing wishes it to be.
Figes’ taste, for character and plot and issue and interpretive meaning, is on the line here. Why did she not choose something from the more intensely dramatic biography of Frame, as Jane Campion knew to do?
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