Katherine Mansfield's Journal

Before I read Katherine Mansfield's Journal, published by Persephone, I thought it would mainly be of interest to those who admire her short stories. Now that I have read it I think it would also be a perfect book for those who want to write and are interested in the writing life.

Mansfield appears never to be completely satisfied with what she has written and constantly strives for truth and clarity in her work:

October 16 1921. Another radiant day. J. is typing my last story, The Garden Party, which I finished on my birthday [October 14]. It took me nearly a month to 'recover' from At the Bay. I made a least three false starts.

Mansfield suffered terribly from consumptive illness and died at the age of just 34. It is clear from her journal that she knew her time was limited. We will never know what she could have written in maturity but her finest short stories are literary masterpieces.

Katherine Mansfield (part 3)

I've been reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green for book group and it is an enjoyable read. Mitchell can certainly write, but the constant stream of media references and brand names carefully placed to remind us that this novel is set in 1982 is slightly irritating. Yes! I get it. The novel is set in 1982. No need to keep going on about butterscotch Angel Delight, Findus Crispy Pancakes and Simon Le Bon.

As a respite from commercial and media saturation I'm looking forward to reading Persephone's Katherine Mansfield's Journal which has just arrived. This entry made me smile:

Journal 1917. Living Alone. Even if I should, by some awful chance find a hair upon my bread and honey - at any rate it is my own hair.

Katherine Mansfield (part 2)

Has Katherine Mansfield gone out of fashion? I couldn't find her in Waterstones or W H Smith. Not on the literary shelves. Not on the 20th century fiction shelves. Nothing in the library. Unless it was all out on loan, which I doubt. I finally found this collection in an academic bookshop. When I first discovered Mansfield back in the 80's she was always well-stocked in bookshops and there were quite a lot of articles about her in the media, too. After all, this was a young woman whose writing was not only admired and fostered but envied by Virgina Woolf.

I've now finished reading this collection and I would recommend The Daughters of the Late Colonel a bleakly comic tale about two delightful sisters, Josephine and Constantia, who have been so oppressed and bullied by their late father they still feel the need to defer to him even after his funeral has taken place. I also liked Marriage a la Mode in which a man's wife is heavily influenced by her pretentious literary and artistic friends who lounge around his house, eat all his food and sneer at him for working for a living. The Woman at the Store is a great, if disturbing, tale set in New Zealand which reminded me a little of the contemporary stories of Annie Proulx.

Katherine Mansfield (part 1)

Short stories have to be good to drag me away from my beloved novels and Katherine Mansfield's short stories are very good indeed. This collection of selected stories includes some set in Europe and others set in Mansfield's native New Zealand. I particularly like the New Zealand stories and these include The Garden Party, Her First Ball, The Doll's House and Prelude.

In The Garden Party, Jose, Laura and Meg Sheridan are assisting their mother to prepare for a lavish party. Workmen arrive to set up a marquee, the gardener is preparing the lawn, the cook is taking deliveries of pastries and pots of pink canna lilies are arriving from the florist. Amidst the preparations a workman is thrown from his horse and killed in the lane outside their house. Laura feels it is no longer appropriate to hold the party but her mother and sisters insist on going ahead ...

Mansfield's style is to show and not tell and many of her stories have a dark or ominous twist which left this reader longing to know more.