A novel about loneliness written in unique language

As I read Janet Frame’s The Edge of the Alphabet, I wondered how much I was reading about her life. I thought as well that the three main characters—Toby, Zoe, and Pat—all of them lonely were in many ways her, as was Thora, who is writing the novel. I’ve already written something on her psychiatric history and how she just escaped a lobotomy.https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2026/05/03/might-neurodivergent-be-the-best-word-or-diagnosis-for-janet-frame/ Toby, Zoe, and Pat meet as they journey by boat from New Zealand across the Pacific to Britain. Toby, a New Zealander and an epileptic, is travelling to Britain to show his strength and independence: “This obstinate conviction of his own power had driven him ten thousand miles across the world, to visit other lands, to walk in them as the rightful king, to force people to realize that Toby Withers was no ordinary epileptic whom people could put out of sight in an institution, or turn from and abandon when his fits became an…