Book Review: "Towards Another Summer" by Janet Frame

I found this book whilst browsing amongst things that could feel very much like a Virginia Woolf novel and I also needed something that relied on the theme of alienation to tell its story. God knows I am getting so bored with the obsession our society has with dystopian novels - it seems to be a cookie-cutter standard and I have given up trying to find one I'll enjoy. There's plenty of sadness and suffering in real life, I don't need a fantasy world with two-dimensional characters to tell me the story of that. Towards Another Summer is very much a real story with a real person at the centre. It is a fantastic achievement of alienation literature which feels so raw and real.

Grace Cleave, a New Zealand expatriate living in London, is an acclaimed writer, yet her personal life is marked by profound loneliness and self-imposed isolation. She feels out of step with the world around her, describing herself as a migratory bird unable to settle. Her inner life is rich, yet her external world feels suffocating, filled with routines that accentuate her disconnection from others. These feelings are exacerbated by her hypersensitivity to social cues and her acute self-consciousness, which lead her to avoid interactions that might demand emotional vulnerability or expose her perceived inadequacies. As someone who has this same sensitivity to social cues, I can honestly say that learning about Grace was a great thing to do.

Grace receives an unexpected invitation to spend a weekend at the home of Philip and Anne Thirkettle, a couple she met briefly at a social gathering. Although their interaction was minimal, they seemed eager to host her. Grace deliberates over the decision with her usual intensity, wondering if she can endure an entire weekend of close company. Despite her instincts urging her to decline, she feels compelled to accept, partly from politeness and partly from curiosity about how others live so freely and comfortably. This is one of the things that feels very Jane Eyre about the book. A woman moving in order to see how others live also, whilst making a journey of self-discovery. It is so compelling to feel all of these things at once whilst reading. I was completely immersed in this part especially.

When Grace arrives, she is greeted warmly by Philip and Anne, whose easy camaraderie and seemingly idyllic life immediately unsettle her. Their home, cosy and inviting, is filled with small tokens of a shared, settled existence—a stark contrast to her sparsely furnished and solitary flat. Grace begins to observe them with a detached, almost anthropological lens, admiring their competence in managing their lives but feeling increasingly alienated by their normality. She feels as though she is intruding into a world to which she does not belong. As someone who only moved to a new city a few months ago, I feel this way all the time. It reminded me of Amerika by Franz Kafka and we all know how I felt about that book (and if you don't, know that I cried for ages).

As the weekend progresses, Grace finds herself retreating into vivid memories of her childhood in New Zealand. These flashbacks are triggered by seemingly mundane moments—the smell of food, the sound of birds, or even the light filtering through the windows. She recalls her family’s financial struggles, the natural beauty of her homeland, and the moments of isolation she experienced even as a child. These memories are bittersweet, underscoring her cultural displacement and her unfulfilled longing for a sense of home. For Grace, New Zealand represents both a place of belonging and a landscape she can never fully return to, symbolising her emotional exile. This part was great fun to read because you get into that flow state where you can sense everything she too, is sensing. It's like being hurtled into another world, slowly and calmly and even if it doesn't have a happy ending - you're just glad to get lost in space.

I won't tell you much more of what happens in this book because to be honest, it would spoil the tensions about the occur. But it is a wonderful book that I have not found many people have read and so, I ask you reader, to pick this book up today. It is such a beautifully written masterpiece.