Product Description

A collection of 15 stories which tell not so much of specific events or of dramas, but more of the ordinary, the everyday reality of life as people live it. Other work by the author includes "Bliss and Other Stories", "In a German Pension" and "Something Childish".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #527681 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

Heart-breakingly beautiful common sense.
All of the stories in 'The Garden Party' are enriched with beautiful imagery, particularly concerning nature. There is great attention to detail, and this gives us a great insight into her characters. Do not, however, expect a heavy-going, cumbersome text - Mansfield manages to convey a great deal in a simplistic format. Although many of her stories are concerned with old age or death, I believe they are essentially optimistic and positive in their nature. Her stories are sensual, and real. This collection can be read lesisurely but reveals more under closer scrutiny.

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.