The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield
1922
Around 12 pages
This was an easy one to knock out, as it is only 12 pages and readily available online. I was blown away by how impressive this was, considering the word count. Take it from somebody who has written many bad short stories. There's really nowhere to hide.
The Sheridan family is getting ready for a garden party. Mrs. Sheridan has ordered an absurd amount of lilies, and her daughter Laura chides her for her interference. Laura and her sister Jose learn from the workmen that a man died outside their gate this morning. Laura believes the party should be called off, but nobody in her family agrees.
This is a particularly fascinating story when you consider the setting, when death was at everybody's front gate. But if comedy is the refusal to cry, then throwing a garden party is a refusal to die. And maybe an excuse to ignore the problems of the working class.
Katherine Mansfield had a tragically short life, and could have penned so many other classics. Why do all my heroes die so horribly?
RATING: *****
Interesting Facts:
The names of the characters Jose, Laurie, and Meg may be a reference to Little Women.
First published in the Saturday Westminster Gazette in three parts.
Mansfield was good friends with Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.
UP NEXT: Amok by Stefan Zweig.
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