Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories – Review

Collected Stories, by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield wrote a lot of short stories in her lifetime. They were all published in different collections, and this particular book was a mega compilation of her entire output. When I saw how thick this book was, my jaw hit the floor (you can't tell from the foreshortening on the photo above, but it is pretty chunky!), but I'm very glad I was not put off by this. It was so well-written, and so varied, that it was honestly not difficult to read at all.

The stories were about all sorts of things, from the perspectives of all sorts of characters. There was one about a young girl who was afraid of her father, but realised by the end that he loved her; one about a woman travelling by train to Germany to be a governess, and making friends with an old man on the way; one about a man discussing with his wife the phenomenon of wives poisoning their husbands, and then she serves him some tea that tastes funny; one about a singing teacher who realises he prefers the company of his students to that of his family; one about a wealthy lady who takes in a homeless person and discovers the power of kindness; one about a lady getting cross whilst reading a thank-you letter from a friend for whom she had recently bought some socks...

Some of these stories were quite sweet and light-hearted and funny; others were creepy, or even sad and moving. But what amazed me in all of them was how incredibly well Mansfield wrote about feelings and emotions. She just seemed to have a knack for pinpointing a really specific feeling, and describing it with spellbinding accuracy, taking ethereal and subtle emotions and senses and spinning them into beautiful imagery, with such precision and vividness that I found myself feeling exactly what her characters felt.

Her descriptions spanned everything from the inexplicable joy of Bertha in the story 'Bliss' ('as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe...') to the devastation of Reggie in 'Mr and Mrs Dove', trying not to cry as his marriage proposal is rejected ('How his throat ached! Could he speak? He had a shot. "I must be getting home," he croaked...'). And there was everything in between, from fear to suspicion to romantic love.

Quite a few of these short stories stood out to me or spoke to me, but I think my favourite was the one called 'Something Childish But Very Natural'. It was about two people, Henry and Edna, who meet each other by chance when they catch the same train, and start to fall in love. I found their burgeoning romance very compelling reading, I appreciated the nuance in their feelings, and I thought Mansfield effortlessly captured the giddiness of having a crush on someone. And as for the chillingly ambiguous twist at the end... Well it made me gasp out loud.

So all in all, I was a massive fan of this collection. I was both touched and amazed by the clarity of character and strength of emotion Mansfield could evoke in such few words. The stories were only short, but they had such depth. The characters were alive. The feelings were real. They sparkled.