Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

Giardini profumati per i ciechi

di Janet Frame

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
1585171,691 (3.91)1
Vera is the mother who has willed herself sightless, Erlene, her daughter, has ceased to speak, and Edward, the husband and father, has taken refuge in a distant land. Beyond this is a mind that has burst the confines of everyday individual consciousness and invented its own tormented reality.
Nessuno
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi 1 citazione

Mostra 5 di 5
As in her three previous novels, in Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963), Janet Frame is again writing about damaged and deluded people living diminished lives. The focus of the novel is the Glace family of New Zealand. Vera Glace lives with her mute adult daughter Erlene in the family home in the town where she grew up. But Erlene’s muteness is the least of their problems. The Glace family is fractured, barely functional, stymied by fear. “I deprived myself of each of my senses,” Vera declares. “It was I who was blind.” Vera’s blindness is apparently a choice: the condition seems to come and go. And there’s this: years earlier, Edward Glace left his family and moved to London to conduct genealogical research into the Strang family. In London Edward has access to a rich assortment of libraries, archives and government records, but he lives alone in a rooming house and seemingly has no friends. Edward’s life is empty, but for the Strangs and his collection of toy soldiers. When people inquire of Edward where his interest in an ordinary family comes from, he doesn’t answer, and in fact doesn’t seem sure of the answer. But Edward has reached a turning point, and this is a source of severe anxiety: he has found out all he can about the historical (dead) Strangs and, to move his project forward, must now approach those who are alive. Back in New Zealand Vera is exceedingly worried about Erlene, who refuses to speak and spends her days in her room staring out the window. Vera pleads daily with her daughter to say something and lectures her on the importance of speech for the survival of the human race, but to no avail. Midway through the novel Vera makes an appointment for Erlene with Dr. Clapper, whom she hopes will get to the bottom of Erlene’s muteness, which has no apparent physical cause, and get her talking again. The thrust of Frame’s tumultuous, pulsating narrative seems to be the role sensory perception plays in human experience, and the imbalance that results when means of social exchange are withdrawn. The novel is composed of parallel internal monologues from the perspectives of the three main characters, in which each faces their greatest fears. Vera’s fear is of being abandoned, a condition that her daughter’s silence exacerbates. Erlene, whose life of the imagination is vibrant and graphic, fears that meddlesome interventions will force her to speak up and rejoin humanity, resulting in exposure to human pressures and the loss of her imaginary companions. And Edward fears the human contact that the next stage of his research demands of him. But all of this is turned on its head in the book’s final chapter, where the source of the churning angst that fills the preceding pages is revealed. By 1963 Janet Frame’s confidence in her art and development as a novelist freed her to take imaginative leaps for which critics and readers would have been woefully unprepared. In Scented Gardens for the Blind her eccentric prose structures and the power of her imagery produce astonishing flights of fancy (“When Uncle Black-Beetle took off his apron and set aside his cutting, cleaning and polishing tools, she noticed that his skin was brown and shining, his eyes were large and black, overhanging his face like street-lamps, and there were dark tracks up and down his face which, lit by his eyes, became caverns, ravines flowing with underground rivers.”). By turns disturbing and playful, and often delightfully, unapologetically weird, Scented Gardens for the Blind continues Janet Frame’s exploration through fiction of the human mind in crisis and the destructive power of isolation and loneliness. ( )
  icolford | Apr 26, 2023 |
This is the sort of novel you immediately want to read all over again once you come to the end. Poetic, sad, strange and absolutely wonderful. ( )
  Amsa1959 | Aug 16, 2012 |
I loved this book. It is poetic, surreal (at times very strange), mesmerizing, and beautifully written. It is a book about the senses, a book about madness, emotions, communication; it is a lush fantasy, a garden of words grown for the human condition. I've dog-eared multiple pages, underlined several passages...and had to stop. A very curious book...uncommon. ( )
  LauraJWRyan | Jun 29, 2011 |
Beautiful: I know, i'm a loser. I wasn't aware of Janet Frame until I saw "Angel at My Table." Better late... The strange and estranged life of the Glace family, all sensory-deprived-- father Edward has left wife and daughter and now spends his time studying the geneology of another family, daughter Erlene has gone mute, and wife Vera has gone blind. Each character lives in a lush world of their own making, never quite understanding what the others want of them. Frame's writing is right on target--she never wastes a word.
  iayork | Aug 9, 2009 |
I despised this novel for a bit. Then I started to get more into it, and by the end I really liked it. In retrospect, I'm not sure what to make of that, frankly. It was original and imaginative, to be sure. The writing was a bit condescending at times, and it was certainly slow to take off. I'd try her again. ( )
  eslee | Apr 16, 2006 |
Mostra 5 di 5
The virtue, joy, necessity, and strangeness of human speech is the subject of this odd free-form novel. Through [its characters] in crisis, the author talks dazzlingly about speech, life, human perceptions, and the rims and imperceptible edges of communication. A disquieting, troubled, often brilliant outburst of a book.
aggiunto da poppycocteau | modificaKirkus Reviews (Aug 1, 1964)
 
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Incipit
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Nota di disambiguazione
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese (1)

Vera is the mother who has willed herself sightless, Erlene, her daughter, has ceased to speak, and Edward, the husband and father, has taken refuge in a distant land. Beyond this is a mind that has burst the confines of everyday individual consciousness and invented its own tormented reality.

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3.91)
0.5
1
1.5
2 1
2.5
3 4
3.5 3
4 9
4.5 1
5 5

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,243,402 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile