I spent much of the afternoon of this humid-damp day finishing reading
The author is one of New Zealand’s finest. ‘Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) is one of the most highly regarded short story writers of the 20th century. A contemporary of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D H Lawrence, she played her part in shaping modernism by experimenting with style, subject matter and theme in a body of work that re-defined the genre. As well as short stories she also wrote letters, reviews and journals in a prolific career which was cut short by her untimely death at the age of 34.’ This quotation comes from https://www.bl.uk/people/katherine-mansfield which describes her rather tragic story.
My view of her stories is that, with fluent, uncluttered, prose she describes her detailed observation of intimate snippets of lives and her surroundings including those absorbed on her travels. The tales selected by Jane Miller are of varying lengths. Three incorporate one particular family, suggesting to me that these could perhaps have formed part of the novel the author never penned.
My own tenuous link with Ms Mansfield is described in https://derrickjknight.com/2018/03/30/colour-coordinated/
What impresses me most about Jennifer Campbell’s illustrations to this volume is
that within such bold, stylised, outlines she manages to convey the range of emotions reflecting the writer’s own variety.
Late in the gloomy afternoon Jackie drove us down to Milford on Sea where the south westerly wind was surprisingly warm as it whipped
sea foam through the rocks at the seething water’s edge, up into the air, swirling past my nose, and rolling across the promenade, where
walkers enjoyed the view,
while others could be glimpsed through the unseasonable gloom against the backdrop of Hurst Castle. I chose not to brighten up these photographs to demonstrate what the light was like on this early summer afternoon.
This evening we dined on succulent roast pork; wholesome sage and onion stuffing; crisp roast potatoes, some of them sweet, and Yorkshire pudding; crunchy carrots; and tender greens, with tasty gravy. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Colle Marrone Appassimento 2016, a powerful, complex, Italian red wine.
