Product Description

Introduction by Claire Tomalin

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2340364 in Books
• Published on: 1991-11-26
• Released on: 1991-11-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 267 pages

Amazon.com Review
Virginia Woolf once described Katherine Mansfield as "of the cat kind, alien, composed, always solitary & observant." All of these qualities are on display in Mansfield's writing, as well; hers are lonely tales of missed connections, inchoate longings, and complicated emotions within the context of a rigidly defined social setting. Born in New Zealand, Mansfield set many of her stories there, even though she emigrated to England in 1908 at age 19, never to return. Her characters are almost invariably middle-class, the daughters, sweethearts, wives, and widows of office clerks, military men, businessmen. In "At the Bay," for example, Mansfield focuses on the Burnell family as they take their summer vacation at the beach. Not content to follow just one character through the story, she drifts in and out of the consciousness of half a dozen, from the family cat to Stanley and Linda Burnell, their children, Linda's sister, Beryl and their in-laws, the Trouts. Dipping into Linda's thoughts, for example, we learn that she loves her husband--"not the Stanley whom everyone saw, not the everyday one; but a timid, sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his prayers and who longed to be good." Unfortunately for Linda, "she saw her Stanley so seldom." Mansfield then swoops into the mind of Stanley's brother-in-law, Jonathan Trout, who is discontented with his life but knows he hasn't the will to change it, and then on to Beryl, whose longing for "someone who will find the Beryl they none of them know" leads her into a rash action.

In the title story, Mansfield concentrates on young Laura Sheridan on the afternoon of her family's garden party. The story follows the family through the preparations--flags to identify the different sandwiches, the delivery of cream puffs, the setting up of a marquee on the lawn. This perfect idyll is broken, however, by news of a fatal accident down the lane. A young workman has been killed, leaving a wife and five children. Into Laura's perfect Eden, death comes whispering and her reaction to it is both subtle and surprising. In fact, many of Mansfield's stories feature young women on the brink of adulthood--facing, for the first time, the realities of their constricted lives. Love is a trap; childbearing is another; death can be "simply marvellous." Mansfield died in 1923 of tuberculosis, leaving behind a body of work that is as bold, unconventional, and modern as she was. The Garden Party and Other Stories is a fitting epitaph. --Alix Wilber

From Library Journal
The Garden Party is the last volume of short stories published before this New Zealand author's untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35. These 15 stories are typical Mansfield slice-of-life glimpses into human relationships: parent-child, wife-husband, friend-friend, all recognizable, all vivid in their gentleness and sensitivity. Marguerite Gavin reads in a light, American-accented, rather uninspired way, but her voices are marvelous; presenting British accents of every description from cockney to Queen, with clear delineation between characters male and female, is a skill especially important in these character-driven tales. Her sound effects (birdcalls, running water, etc.) are perfect, and she sings in such a lovely clear soprano that the listener wishes there were more songs in the stories. The short story format is often a favorite with listeners who hesitate to commit to hours and hours of the same work. Mansfield belongs in all fiction collections; highly recommended.AHarriet Edwards, East Meadow P.L., NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
In the title story of this collection, an extravagant garden party coincides with the accidental death of a local working-class man, and the daughter of the party's hostess is touched by a newborn social conscience: "Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those children, and the body being carried into the house. But it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I'll remember it again after the party's over, she decided." The irony is eloquent as she later intrudes upon the funeral with an afterthought gift, is shocked at the genuine grief and poverty of her neighbors, and leaves with her sense of romantic tragedy intact. Katherine Mansfield's stories tend to be laced with such irony. While at times she can be heavy-handed and marked by the prejudices of her time and class, at her best she is insightful and wry, conveying complicated relationships and difficult ideas through deceptively simple language. Her characters include couples who embark upon marriage compromises or endure marriage's charades; people disdaining, deceiving, envying one another; people desperately and persistently misunderstanding each other and themselves. Many of these characters have outlived their dreams and cling to illusions of their own usefulness and happiness. The stories in The Garden Party are morality plays which dramatize significant moments in shallow lives and show how tragedy can transcend the trivial. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Kirsten Backstrom

Customer Reviews

please don't miss this - Mansfield is essential
If you've never read her short stories (she never wrote anything else), please do, and then read her journal. There is really something incredible that's underneath the surface of her short stories. If you just looked at the surface you might think they were cutesy or affected (little girls figure largely), but you would be completely missing the point. It's hard to explain what's so moving about them. When she describes some lazy afternoon, she just gets it so right that all the vast range of human experience seems to be contained in this afternoon (whereas in any Great American Novel-esque tomes you read only a fraction of that experience is ever expressed). But at the same time, it was just this cute little vignette that had very satisfying descriptions of flowers and little girls playing. The journal will help you understand her sadness as it's expressed in her work. You know when you are very, very upset, and you see something so beautiful or even funny, you're likely to become on the verge of tears? That's how Mansfield sounds in her stories - the stories are that beautiful thing that she sees.

She is most often compared to Chekhov, and it's not difficult to see why. I truly believe that Mansfield innovated and practically invented the English (language) short story.

Essentially English poignant presentiments
Mansfield was in competition with Virigina Wolf during her short life - the one female writer who could compete with the proverbial literary giantess of the pre-war era (as Wolf herself admitted - she respected the former's talent). I think Mansfield ranks as true literary bloom of the first quarter of the 20th century as a generality, hobnobbing with Irish talent like Joyce and fitting into that stage that also held T. E. Lawrence and John Buchan - the male writers always dominating. Mansfield represents the rank outsider, not male, not "English" but breaking through into recognition while she lived.

Her writing is distinctly impressionist in flavour. Sentences broken and stories only half complete. But she writes beautifully, often echoing her impending death from TB. An outsider with her sexuality in how she experimented including a brief pretence of motherhood and her spirituality. She attended Gurdjieff's centre and was obviously fond of the pragmatism of certain Eastern traditions compared to the prevailing cult.

But she only reveals so much in her writing. So much remaining unsaid. Happy stories like "Bliss" and funny stories like "The school mistress". So many details from life at the time like ships, parties, schools, courtship, and the lives of ordinary people from the well bred elites to the downtrodden poor. Mansfield frequently displays a sympathy for the underdog and cries out about the transience of things and the lack of stability in pleasure - vaguely Buddhist even ... But her stories are yet so English with glimpses of her native New Zealand from which she was divorced. She write well about the dazzle of things like summer or flowers, children, sounds and people - everything highlighted. She is so good with colloquial speech and represents it well ... conversations that bring out sentiments of characters and in the reader.

You can't get enough of this genre. The only genre she knew. Little cartoons of short stories, almost always making a point, sometimes sharp but not overtly moralistic. Everything is so precise, a melody from the heart. This like any other collection of her work is worth attention, to read or as a gift.

The introduction is good and Mansfield will probably for ever remain not too well known but a gem to those who find her.

The Garden Party and Other Stories
I came across K.M. as she liked to be refered, 60 years after her death. Very late,but better late then never. And especially for K.M. In a german Pension indrigued me first,a review told me, she could have made a lot of money, to publish it again, during the WWI.she declined. She had lost her Brother at the somme, but could not bring herself to more war mongering.
Then I read The Garden Party, and new nearly instandly what kind of person she might have been.
She disliked being priviliged, down the Street, kids her age where starving. The Garden Party gave her an opportunity to disclose Society as what it was. The gap between the Have and Have not.And this in the early 20th century in New Zealand.
And the Garden Party is on of the few stories at the backdrop of New Zealand scenery.
Her Stories make still a highly interesting read, very modern issues with an unbelievable talent for drama, as well as a very dry Sense of humor, like in 'A german Pension'
One or two stories of her are always my companion.