Major Authors: Janet Frame, Maurice Gee, Patricia Grace

Abstract

This chapter discusses the work of three New Zealand novelists: Janet Frame, Maurice Gee, and Patricia Grace. Frame began to publish in the late 1940s, Gee in the mid-1950s, and Grace in the early 1960s — they all started with short stories on ground that had been cleared by Frank Sargeson in his fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. All three writers have been, like Sargeson, critical of a conformist social pattern from a liberal humanist perspective, and sympathetic with its outsiders and victims. The chapter first provides a background on the careers of Frame, Gee, and Grace before considering some of their novels, including Frame's The Rainbirds (1968) and The Carpathians (1988), Gee's Plum trilogy (1978–83), and Grace's Maōri narratives Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps (1978), Potiki (1986), and Tu (2004).