The Garden Party and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Penguin English Library features the best novels in the English language. Get lost in the amazing stories, browse the Penguin English Library. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'. 'All that I write,' Mansfield said, 'all that I am - is on the borders of the sea. It is a kind of playing.'
About the Author
Born in New Zealand in 1888, Kathering Mansfield Beauchamp was primarily a writer of short stories. She published Prelude and The Garden Party and Other Stories before her premature death from TB in 1923. One more book (Something Childish) and her journal and letters were published posthumously.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Very early morning. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Very early morning. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you like Penelope Lively or Tracy Chevalier, chances are you will love Katherine Mansfield's stories.
The Garden Party is a collection of captivating short stories about life in the early 20th century. The author is a painter with words - she beautifully captures the colours, textures and atmosphere of the places and people she writes about, encapsulating a beauty and tranquillity that existed before the technological age; yet her stories are in no way sentimental. On the contrary, there is an edgy, almost surreal quality about them, and they seem to loiter at the fragile limits of concrete experience and human equanimity. They tap into real human feelings, never presuming to analyse fully, but only to understand with deep empathy the concerns, wishes, hopes and dreams that flow through our lives. Mansfield crafts each story with care - though seamlessly - and so each one satisfies the reader by having a theme, a development of it, and a resolution (even if this is an emotional state rather than a dramatic event). Finally, I wouldn't want you to assume that these stories are dreamy or passive. There are also some powerful and dramatic elements, so that reading them can be an emotionally intense experience.
Katherine Mansfield, who as a short-story writer has been compared to Chekhov, died at the age of 34 and does not seem to be as well recognised today as she fully deserves. Somehow the poignancy of her early death seems to be presaged in the numinous quality of these stories. There often seems to be a gently hovering question mark: it there a meta-narrative - some higher reality? But Mansfield's answer is to create a richer experience of the 'here and now' of her time.
The Garden Party is a collection of captivating short stories about life in the early 20th century. The author is a painter with words - she beautifully captures the colours, textures and atmosphere of the places and people she writes about, encapsulating a beauty and tranquillity that existed before the technological age; yet her stories are in no way sentimental. On the contrary, there is an edgy, almost surreal quality about them, and they seem to loiter at the fragile limits of concrete experience and human equanimity. They tap into real human feelings, never presuming to analyse fully, but only to understand with deep empathy the concerns, wishes, hopes and dreams that flow through our lives. Mansfield crafts each story with care - though seamlessly - and so each one satisfies the reader by having a theme, a development of it, and a resolution (even if this is an emotional state rather than a dramatic event). Finally, I wouldn't want you to assume that these stories are dreamy or passive. There are also some powerful and dramatic elements, so that reading them can be an emotionally intense experience.
Katherine Mansfield, who as a short-story writer has been compared to Chekhov, died at the age of 34 and does not seem to be as well recognised today as she fully deserves. Somehow the poignancy of her early death seems to be presaged in the numinous quality of these stories. There often seems to be a gently hovering question mark: it there a meta-narrative - some higher reality? But Mansfield's answer is to create a richer experience of the 'here and now' of her time.
Format:Kindle Edition
I absolutely love these stories. It is such a shame there are so many appalling typographical errors in the Kindle version of the text though. They really affect the reader's ability to enjoy and appreciate the elegant and witty prose.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
in her short life Kaherine Mansfield became a master of the crisp, vivd short story, and this is arguably her best collection. Although written a hundred years ago, her use of language cuts directly to us today. thoroughly enjoyable.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Short Stories
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
