- Title: The Garden Party and Other Stories
- Author: Katherine Mansfield
- Year Published: 1922/This Edition: 1997 (Constable & Co./Penguin Books)
- Year Purchased: 2003/2004
- Source: Unknown
- About: It’s almost enough to state that “Katherine Mansfield wrote short stories. The end.” It’s fitting that the genre she helped make a singularly modern medium was, largely, her only medium. If you require action (fast-paced or otherwise) from your fiction, then her quiet, introspective, internal and often plotless stories aren’t for you. The book is just long enough to help pass a lonely afternoon; its perhaps best read with a cup of tea to hand and feet up, on a languorously rainy Saturday. You probably won’t walk away any happier, but you’ll be richer for the experience.
- Motivation: I’m that rarest of creatures: a fiction writer with no real ambition to write the Great American Novel-or any novel. Short stories are my talent’s natural home. Katherine Mansfield should be respected by any writer of short fiction.
- Times Read: 2
- Random Excerpt/Page 114: “On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present-a surprise-something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.”
- Happiness Scale: 9
Katherine Mansfield (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 
I absolutely adore this excerpt!
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Isn’t it lovely?
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I agree with silverscreenings – the excerpt is exceptional. It makes me want to buy this book just to read the rest of of the story and then go strike the match dashingly to my own kettle, even though my gas is automatic.
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Well, you know she’s a favourite of mine. This story in question is very, very short (just a few pages).
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