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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
emotional
sad
medium-paced
informative
sad
medium-paced
Mansfield is due for a new biography. This one reads as dated, oddly mean-spirited, and fairly shallow. To my disappointment, there is next to nothing about her early days growing up in New Zealand. This was the reason I picked up the book, after having read her brilliant collection, The Garden Party. Despite its short length for a biography, this drags at times because the author simply gives us itineraries, details about travel, and boring domestic squabbles. There’s also a great deal of critical but vague judgment about Mansfield’s work at times that I found maddening. The author will dismiss a short story as being overly sentimental, or not Mansfield‘s best work, or terrible or disappointing, but provide next to no details as to why she made that judgment. It gives the reader the unpleasant sensation that this biographer thinks of herself as the final arbiter of the literary quality of Katherine Mansfield’s work. I was bitterly disappointed to learn there was no commentary on Mansfield’s work on her New Zealand stories. We simply learned that they were published. This was a shell of a biography, and Mansfield deserves better.
emotional
informative
medium-paced
This is a really fascinating and insightful biography of a contradictory, brilliant, mean, courageous woman. Katherine Mansfield defied convention in many of her choices but paid a very high cost. Claire Tomalin is brilliant at getting to the core of her subjects - and I really enjoyed this fairly slim biography.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Not Tomalin's best, but an excellent and engaging read. The early life of Mansfield is rather fascinating, but the narrative starts to fall apart after Murray enters her life. This could just be because Mansfield spent so much of her later days ill and unable to write. I would have appreciated more of a discussion on Mansfield's lasting legacy - which was disputed rather soon after her death - and Murray's profiting off of her work.
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
Claire Tomalin's writing is very good, which is why I gave it 4 stars. I found Katherine Mansfield rather annoying
Katherine Mansfield has always interested me ever since I heard that Virginia Woolf envied her way of writing. This biography is interesting and very easy to read, describing Katherine and people around her. For some reason, I was really annoyed to hear so much talk of her second husband, and would have wished to hear more of Katherine's side.
I always enjoy Claire Tomalin's books even when, as here, I don't know much about the subject. She presents a compelling portrait, and although I never warmed to her, I did admire her in the end.