'All I had experienced, all the stories I had read or dreamed came to me the moment I, a stranger, turned the key in the lock of the unknown house.'

In a sweltering basement in downtown Baltimore, Mavis Halleton, writer, ventriloquist and gossip, is struggling to write her novel when an unexpected invitation arrives. The Garretts, a couple Mavis has never heard of but who admire her work, are to spend time in Italy and offer the use of their airy home in the Berkeley hills.

During her stay, an earthquake hits northern Italy and Mavis, to her surprise, inherits the house. But, surrounded by museum replicas and tasteful imitations, she finds reality itself is on shaky ground.

In this highly inventive novel, reality, fiction and dreams are woven together as Janet Frame playfully explores the process of writing fiction.

Quirky, rich, eccentric
Puts everything else that has come my way this year in the shade
Probably as near a masterpiece as we are likely to see this year . . . it is a novel full of riches * Daily Telegraph *
A clever, high-spirited performance * New Yorker *
She treats the book like one of those miniature glass balls which snows when you shake it. Playful, deft work, then, by a writer of eccentric strengths * Kirkus Reviews *

Janet Frame (1924-2004) is New Zealand's most famous writer. She was a novelist, poet, essayist and short-story writer. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She wrote her first novel, Owls Do Cry while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.

Her autobiography inspired Jane Campion's acclaimed film, An Angel at My Table. She was an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Literature and won the Commonwealth Literature Prize. In 1983 she was awarded the CBE.