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A review by lgpiper
The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
4.0
My awesome niece, Becca, a Wellesley grad who majored in English, seemed to think I should read some Katherine Mansfield. I was interested anyway because it seems that Mansfield had influenced both Willa Cather and Sarah Orne Jewitt, two women authors of whom I've become rather fond in my declining years. So anyway, I picked up this book (well downloaded it to my kindle) and am glad I did.
This is a collection of fifteen stories, some quite short. The first one, At the Bay is rather longer and probably counts as a novelette (7500–17,500 words).
Many of the stories seem rather like pictures in words. Pictures of an instant in time in someone's life or some family's life. The picture might be an hour, an afternoon, or a day. The writing and imagery are imaginative and arresting. I can now see why Becca thought I should expand myself a bit.
----------------------------- 5 Dec 2023 -----------------------
This is a second reading. My first reading was in 2017, and I thought then that this was a rather fine book. My second reading happened because my spouse conned me into signing up for a geezer course at Tufts University on several stories in this book. I believe we read and discussed six of the fifteen stories in the book.
I can't imagine how people conjure up such minutiae to discuss from within the bowels of a short story, especially a short story in which nothing much happens. Clearly, I was not cut out for literary criticism. It's a good thing I had physical chemistry as a back up plan.
This is a collection of fifteen stories, some quite short. The first one, At the Bay is rather longer and probably counts as a novelette (7500–17,500 words).
Many of the stories seem rather like pictures in words. Pictures of an instant in time in someone's life or some family's life. The picture might be an hour, an afternoon, or a day. The writing and imagery are imaginative and arresting. I can now see why Becca thought I should expand myself a bit.
----------------------------- 5 Dec 2023 -----------------------
This is a second reading. My first reading was in 2017, and I thought then that this was a rather fine book. My second reading happened because my spouse conned me into signing up for a geezer course at Tufts University on several stories in this book. I believe we read and discussed six of the fifteen stories in the book.
I can't imagine how people conjure up such minutiae to discuss from within the bowels of a short story, especially a short story in which nothing much happens. Clearly, I was not cut out for literary criticism. It's a good thing I had physical chemistry as a back up plan.