Author : Katherine Mansfield
What is it about : A selection of about 30 short stories from this well traveled writer who was born in New Zealand and had sojourned in various parts of Europe; she died at the age of 35. This book covered her work spanning her productive years and the topics she wrote varied tremendously from moody ship voyages, busy garden parties to marital tension and class prejudice. Most of the stories covered an amazing 5 to 10 pages only.
Some thoughts after having read the book : Each story read like an episode from different long-running TV Classics soap opera and the reader just happened to sit-in and viewed one of these episodes. Once I had accustomed to this aspect and perceptive, I quite enjoyed each story, even without knowing anything about the "previous" episodes such as the plot line, the characters, the settings etc. and the reader would just dive in to the environment framed up by the author and just "watch a bit of soap". However, one had to bear in mind that the reader would be left in mid-air at the end of each story as there is really no beginning and no end.
Would I recommend this book to you : Read a bit of "literature" for a change; good for your spirit, improve your English and get to know the style and prose of one of the famous writers of a century ago.
