Claire Harman is an expert on all things Katherine Mansfield and the author of the recently published biography about the lauded writer, All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the art of risking everything, which was also published in May 2023 to honour the centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s death at the tender age of 34.
Wild Places – selected stories, is a companion to that book. It features stories selected by Harman to illustrate the breadth of talent Mansfield possessed, and to underline the author’s capacity for acute observation and mimicry. It is oft-quoted - but still worth repeating - that Mansfield was the only writer Virginia Woolf was jealous of. What is less often said, and which is a fact more frequently acknowledged as critics of her work have looked back through the lens of time, is that Mansfield was a setter of trends, the harbinger of the modern style of short-story writing.
Harman writes: “Katherine Mansfield’s writing transformed the short-story genre. She created stories miraculous in their intensity yet seemingly clear and effortless. The shift of a heart, the beat of a moment, the changing of the light – in these short works emotional universes are contained within glimpses. Economical, inventive, profound and funny.”
I concur. I’ve read excerpts from Mansfield’s work before; and I have read a previous biography about her remarkable and short life. I already had deep respect for her craft, and her contribution to literature. But with this book and my own deeper immersion into Katherine Mansfield’s captivating, breathless, wry, exquisitely-detailed and eloquently written stories depicting a vast array of different characters, my respect has only grown.
Let a better student than I make claims about her legacy; her ground-breaking talent for short-story writing. I will only say this: there are writers who write enjoyable and satisfying stories and worthy books. And then there are the literary giants: Charles Dickens; Mark Twain; Thomas Hardy, The Bronte sisters – all; Daphne Du Maurier; Barbara Kingsolver; Tim Winton; Sebastian Barry – to name but a few. These are the writers whose words ripple through your brain in the days, weeks and months after you read their books. The scenes and characters they create are so vivid and three dimensional they leap from the pages, and purport to be real. They inhabit the reader for a long time after the story is ended.
Mansfield is one of these writers. Her descriptive powers are truly astounding. She creates places the reader can occupy and these remain clearly in their mind’s eye for some time to come. She does this with apparent ease. Her writing is not laboured. But my respect for Katherine Mansfield as a writer also comes from her ability to inhabit and describe the physical appearance, mannerisms and speech of her characters, male, female, old and young, with such authenticity, they become real to the reader.
If you value beautiful, lyrical writing and you love the short story genre, add this wonderful book to your collection. I am sure it is one you will return to again and again.
Reviewer: Peta Stavelli
Penguin Books