About the Author: Born in New Zealand in1888 she came to England to finish her education. She was a regular contributor to The New Age and her first book In a German Pension was published in 1911, she married the editor of The Rhythm for which she was writing at the time. She contracted turbuculosis in 1917 and much of her life from this time on was I pursuit of health. This disease cut her life short and she died I 1923.
The Garden Party was her final book. The short stories represent her observations of human behaviours in ordinary circumstances, especially that of fragile emotions, half understood feelings. There is great Beauty in her language, no better expressed tha in two of the stories, Miss Brill, a lonely lady who likes nothing better than to go and sit in the Park at the Park Tea Room and imagine others lives from her observations. On this particular occasions she hears a less than complementary account of herself by a young couple. She is devastated by this and returns heartbroken to her lonely room. The Garden Party relates a story of privilege and the apparent absurd prioritisation within those echelons. A young man dies at the gates of their Estate and the priority is to get the Garden Party underway. Only one member of the family visits the house and is confused by the emotion that is apparent there.
The group enjoyed the fact that they could dip in to the book and read a complete story. Between us all the book was read in its entirety with each member taking something fome each of them. It was unanimously agreed that Katherine Mansfield's writing was beautifully descriptive expressing tangible emotion and observations.
The books on offer by Debra and Stepen were;
Jeffrey Eugeneides. Middlesex
Elizabeth Haynes. Into the Darkest Corner
Tea Obreht. The Tigers Wife
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
Pigeon English was selected
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