The Garden Party and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield [92]
this brief stage direction, the whole story is told in the words of the lady’s maid herself. We are meant, however, to read between her lines, and see implications that she does not. K. M., describing another story she wrote about this time, said: ‘the story is told by a man who gives himself away, and hides his traces at the same moment’. It is an effect characteristic of her style – oblique, ironic, sometimes comic but more often haunting – pointing to the gaps between people, and the divisions inside people’s personalities. It is also something the short story is well-fitted to do, since readers are invited to scrutinize this kind of text, hold it in their minds all at once, and think twice (at least) before moving on.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction
Futher Reading
A Note on the Text
The Garden Party and Other Stories
At the Bay
The Garden Party
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Mr and Mrs Dove
The Young Girl
Life of Ma Parker
Marriage à la Mode
The Voyage
Miss Brill
Her First Ball
The Singing Lesson
The Stranger
Bank Holiday
An Ideal Family
The Lady’s Maid
Notes