The Short Stories
Katherine Mansfield · 1945
Mansfield and Joyce were the twin inventors of modernist short fiction; she came at it from the lyrical, impressionistic side. Her stories of colonial experience, gender, and class anticipate Woolf's interiority. "The Garden Party" is one of the great stories.
The case against
Mansfield works in mood and moment, which means a fair number of these pieces stop just as they seem to begin, more watercolor sketch than story. The collected volume flatters this by sheer accumulation; read straight through, the slighter fragments and the unfinished feeling dilute the few genuinely great ones. The pat little epiphany is a habit she returns to often.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
