Novelist
During this time she also worked on her most well-known and highly praised novel The Story of a New Zealand River (1920), which tells the story of an Englishwoman who has to adjust to living in an isolated timber-mill settlement. Despite being popular in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom, it received a somewhat hostile response back in New Zealand, where critics disapproved of the novel's unconventional themes. They also took offence at her alteration of geography and population to suit the story. Alistair Fox has argued that The Story of a New Zealand River was a significant influence on the film The Piano (1993) by Jane Campion.
Her next two novels, The Passionate Puritan (1921) and the less popular The Strange Attraction (1922) were both set in New Zealand, and were based around her childhood experiences.
In 1923, Mander moved to London, where she worked for the Harrison Press of Paris. She wrote numerous essays and short stories, and acted as a London correspondent for multiple New Zealand newspapers. Her next novel, Allen Adair (1925), was the last to be set in New Zealand, which was set around the kauri gum-digging industry. It centered on the hero's struggle against the middle-class aspirations of his family. Her next two novels, The Besieging City (1926) and Pins and Pinnacles (1928), were set in New York and Paris respectively. She also completed another novel, but had it destroyed after it was rejected by a publisher.
Her health failing, she returned to New Zealand in 1932, where she looked after her elderly father. She attempted to write her seventh novel, but only managed a few articles and reviews until her death in Whangarei in 1949, at the age of 72.
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Famous quotes containing the word novelist:
“The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
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