Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield in an edition that is half Korean and half English. The short stories are:
" Bliss","The Garden Party", "The Stranger", "An Ideal Family", "A Cup of Tea", "The Fly", "Honeymoon" and "the Doll's House".
The first four short stories are taken from "The Garden Party" published in 1922 and the last four are taken from "The Dove's Nest" published in 1923.
I had tried to read Mansfield many years ago and had difficulty for reasons that escapes me. She was well thought of as a writer by D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Wolfe. I saw this book in Home Plus and decided to give her another try. For a woman who lived only 34 years, she wrote many short stories and I enjoyed the ones that were included in this book.
The stories seem to come onto the senses in one way but stay in another for they do stay long after they are read. The one story that has impressed me the most is "The Garden Party" which on its surface is about a pretty young thing that seems very impressible but the story is about life itself and how death can come unexpectedly to teach those of us still living how precious life is. Even that sense is a bit trite in describing this wonderful story. I don't think I would like the protagonist in the story but I like what she sees in life.
That is what all of these stories are. They sneak up on the reader and take one by surprise as being one kind of story but really are something else entirely. At least that is how I viewed them. I can see how I would not have liked them when I was younger and expected my fiction to be one way and not to change in midstream so to speak. I wanted more certainty in my life then and now I don't mind uncertainty at all. Some of the stories do not spell out what is happening and some do.
It is really quite sad that her life ended so soon. It would have been really interesting to have seen how her fiction would have changed through the years. It is really possible she was a genius in that she was just learning her trade when TB cut her life short.
