Title: Owls do cry
Subtitle: a novel.
First published: 1957
Description: Set in provincial, pre-1940 New Zealand, this novel explores the Withers family and in particular Daphne. When one of Daphne's sisters, Francie, dies at the rubbish dump where the children search for treasure, a crisis is provoked which leads Daphne to a mental asylum where she is given shock treatment. Her voice from 'the Dead Room' haunts the novel with its poetic insights.
Subjects: Mentally ill, Fiction, Families, Electroconvulsive therapy, Alienation (Social psychology), Nineteen forties, Social life and customs, Manners and customs, Fiction, general