An Angel At My Table

I just watched this 1990 movie by Jane Campion about New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who spent 8 yrs of her 20s in a loony bin mis-diagnosed with schizophrenia. Stories about mental illness make me uncomfortable. They strike too close to home! Janet Frame was voluntarily hospitalized at the Avondale mental facility, near which I grew up. The loonies used to walk past my friend’s house and they’d always be listening to radios. I figured that because they were loony, I could take advantage of them, so I tried to swap my undies for their radios, but they weren’t loony enough to go for this deal.