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I have come across Mansfield numerous times in school, but not until this year, when I read her entire collection of short stories, have I begun appreciating her greatness as a writer. In her stories, Mansfield captures some of the impressions we encounter daily and have time only to remark how surprising, how sudden, and how fleeting they are. Some stories, like "A Garden Party", "The Doll's House", "The Daughters of the Late General", accurately convey the sense of loss, the breath of youth, the regret of unfulfilled lives all in subtle and striking prose. The beauty of the writing lies in the subtlety of description, the use of symbolism, and the immediacy of the language, not unlike her contemporary and admirer Virginia Woolf. I was fortunate enough to find a copy of Claire Tomalin's biography of Mansfield, and reading it gave me a better grasp of the context of the writing. If the stories sometimes seem remarkable or shocking for the time they were written in, Mansfield's life too readily provided a source to draw from. Her presence and personal failings, triumphs, and conflicts are felt throughout her work, and rereading the stories knowing about her life impressed this sense further. Her stories show what a writer can do when inspired, and suggest what a much greater writer she could have been with time, health, and happiness later in life.
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
This collection of short stories is a remarkably good introduction to Katherine Mansfield. All of her most well-known and representative stories are included here, along with some that are lesser-known. The beauty of Mansfield's writing lies in her poetic description of detail--her power of suggestion--and her courage. She was determined, both in her life and in her writing, to move against the current of the time. Her life was filled with problems; her health, her love life, and her writing all caused her measureless pain, but in spite of these she lived her life the way she chose to live it. And though her writings were often critized--not least by her notable rival, Virginia Woolf--she kept on in the face of difficulty, and is now recognized as a major transformer of the short story. A few examples from this collection would be in order. In "At the Bay," Mansfield examines in great detail the experiences and emotions of each member of a large family in New Zealand. It is in this story that she displays perhaps to the fullest extent her ability to take seemingly unimportant details--gestures, looks, scattered thoughts--and from them build a fascinating portrayal of an individual's personality. In "Psychology," she conducts a unique experiment. At first glance, not much happens in the story; but on further examination and multiple rereadings, the depth of conflict becomes evident, and then, Mansfield's understanding of the deepest nooks and crannies not only of the female but also of the male character. "The Singing Lesson" progresses in a lighter vein; a spinster singing teacher receives a message from her fiance, breaking off their engagement; she begins her teaching miserable, heart-broken, and full of anger.Read more ›
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
There are 28 stories in this very excellent collection by Katherine Mansfield, the settings reflecting her own life experiences in New Zealand and England in the early part of the 20th century. Her detailed descriptions of objects are intrinsic to the stories, tiny sparkles that spread out and create a canvas on which her characters interact. Every story has its own suppressed passion as Ms. Mansfield gets right into the heart of what makes us all human. They are filled with arrivals and departures, spinsterhood and marriage, love and loss and pangs of despair. Children play a role in her writings, as do distinctions of social class. Life is a struggle for her characters who are timeless in their humanity, although they all live in a world that existed more than 80 years ago. With rare exceptions, the stories are sad. I was impressed by her writing, which is layered with subtleties in the way she deals with the major themes of life and death. Her structure is unique for its time, as there doesn't seem to be any center or an easily identified beginning, middle and end. Often, they are simply small slices of life, rare glimpses into human nature with sharp insights that sparked my own memories and feelings. It might have been uncomfortable, but reading these stories was a deeply enriching literary experience.
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