vanishingworld 's review for:

Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life by Claire Tomalin

2.0

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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.