A review by paubre
Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield

4.0

I love Mansfield's stories. She's such a great writer, though I would agree with some of the other reviewers that she would have been greater had she not died young. This books looses one star for me on the editing. I went to a talk by the editor, and she's brilliant.
So, I don't really get this book. I don't get the choice of stories, nor the order they were put in. What I get least of all, are the notes. She annotates pack horse, spuds and buggy, but not pinafore. I think the annotation would work well for a 16-year old who hasn't read a lot, but if you have an extended vocabulary and have read some of the works of the period and the period before this book, it's bewildering what is annotated and what is not.
The stories at the beginning of the book are more easily digestible than the ones in the third quarter, which was very hard to get through. It took me two years to finish this book, even though I love it. Maybe that's because short stories have a harder time keeping your attention fixated. I'll have to try another collection to be sure.
My favourite story is 'how pearl button was kidnapped', which I've been recommended and reading with others left, right and center.