YELLOW FLOWERS IN THE ANTIPODEAN ROOM by Janet Frame. 248 pages. Braziller. $5.95.
Writing from the focus of the spiritually down and out, the demented and the dead, New Zealander Janet Frame has developed a tidy literary reputation as a wild necromancer. Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room, her seventh novel, offers a typically hard look at life from the dark side.
Godfrey Rainbird, a 30-year-old British-born emigrant to New Zealand, is pronounced dead after a traffic accident. His wife prepares to don widow's weeds, his children begin to adjust as orphans, his sister...