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The Garden Party

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The Garden Party

By: Katherine Mansfield
Narrated by: Dame Peggy Ashcroft
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About this listen

 This recording contains four of Katherine Mansfield's best stories. In The Daughters of the Late Colonel, two sisters are recently bereaved; while in Her First Ball a young girl attends her first dance. The Singing Lesson features Miss Meadows, a music teacher in turmoil; and in The Stranger, a middle-aged couple are reunited.©1922 Katherine Mansfield (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fiction Short Stories Witty British Fiction

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I have always loved Katherine Mansfield short stories so I downloaded this audible with some trepidation. To hear them narrated so brilliantly with all the humor and pathos they contain is a total joy.

excellent

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Perfect narration, totally absorbing. Each story about nothing very much, but also about so much. Delightful portraits of flawed, ordinary people of their time

Beautiful

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It’s a long time since I’ve read any of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories and enjoyed these dramatically narrated ones.

Best of Mansfield and Ashcroft

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short stories, quite enjoyable, ok for free listen, wouldn't buy it. A bit of a downer rather than uplifting.

OK short stories

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With this recording I have been simultaneously introduced to Katherine Mansfield and Dame Peggy Ashcroft and have consequently become an equally big fan of both.
Thank you Audible for such a treasure and could you please please pair the brilliance of Dame Peggy Ashcroft with more stories by Katherine Mansfield?
I think I would best liken these stories, with their singular perspectives and endearing strangeness and humour , to an early 20th century Wes Anderson screenplay, had he been living in that society at that time.
Mansfield’s writing is poetical and at times laugh-out-loud hilarious. She is a great writer. I can’t wait to read more

Two Treasures

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These stories drew me in and finally engrossed me. A portrait of a bygone era, brilliantly narrated by Dame Peggy Ashcroft.

Compelling

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The singing teacher is one of the best narrations I have ever listened to ..so entertaining, so funny

So enjoyable

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The finely crafted and nuanced stories are richly read by Dame Peggy. My only complaint would be that I wish there were more!

Beautifully read

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I stumbled across this little collection of four stories while browsing Audible’s included-with-membership section, and it was really the fact that it was narrated by the wonderful Dame Peggy Ashcroft that attracted me to it at first. The collection has pretty mixed ratings so I wasn’t expecting much. How wrong I was! Three of the four stories are perfect little gems, and the fourth, while not to the same standard, is still very good. Peggy Ashcroft’s narration is a delight – her voice and style is perfectly suited to the mostly Edwardian era of the stories and she gives each of the main characters a beautifully realised personality of her own. On checking why the reviews were mixed, I discovered the reason is simple, and the fault of the publisher – apparently The Garden Party is one of Mansfield’s most famous stories but despite the title of the audiobook it is not included in this collection. This has led to many disgruntled fans understandably marking the audiobook down. But if you go into as I did, not knowing any of the stories and having no expectations of which stories will be included, then this is a joy.

Since there are only four stories, here’s a little idea of each of them…

The Daughters of the Late Colonel – This is the longest story, running at just under 50 minutes. It’s a quiet, beautifully told tale of two ageing spinster sisters in the week following the death of their father. Full of gentle, sympathetic humour, we gradually learn through their conversations with each other that they have been subject all their lives to his dominating whims, their lives empty otherwise. They loved him and have never questioned his authority, but now that he is gone will they be able to throw off their timidity, break free of their repression? As they look to the future, they can both glimpse a different sort of life if they only have the courage to step out through the open door of their cage. It's a bittersweet story, with feminism gently embedded into it, yet those touches of humour prevent it from being too sad – a small tale of wasted female lives told with great insight and empathy, and brought to life perfectly in Peggy Ashcroft's reading.

Her First Ball – A young girl, brought up in the country, has now come to town and is attending her first ball. Previously she has only danced in the schoolroom with other girls as her partners. Her companions, cousins, I think, are kind and make sure her dance card is filled by all their friends and acquaintances. Her first dance is magical – the floor, the flowers, the lights, the orchestra, a handsome partner, everything! After a few dances with various partners all of whom add to her general delight in the evening, she is claimed by an older man. He laughs at her innocent delight, gently, not meaning to be cruel, and jokes about how the magic will pass in time and she will soon enough be a middle-aged matron, sitting at the side of the dance floor, chaperone to her own daughter. Mansfield beautifully shows the girl's ecstasy turned to despair – the only two possible emotions at that age. The magic is gone, everything is ruined, she must go home! But her next partner is there ready to claim her for the next dance… This is such a lovely story, and so true about the extremes of emotion that we feel at that age. It has a perfect little twist in the tail that means the reader doesn't have to worry too much about our little heroine’s evening being spoiled!

The Singing Lesson – A music teacher receives a letter from her fiancé breaking off their engagement out of the blue. As her mind desperately tries to make sense of the letter and as she sees her future suddenly cold and empty ahead of her, she still has to teach her class. Again this one is bittersweet but more strongly humorous than the previous stories. She chooses a mournful song and makes the girls sing it again and again, demanding more emotion each time until the girls are frankly terrified! The humour, however, is tempered by the fact the we are privy to her thoughts and see the desperation she feels, and the growing horror of having to tell her colleagues that she, who had always seemed the least likely to find a husband, has been jilted. There is a twist again in the tail, though I didn’t find it quite so satisfactory – it worked in terms of the story, but left questions unanswered. But again Mansfield’s characterisation of this lonely woman and of the lowly social status accorded to spinsters is superbly done.

The Stranger – a middle-aged man is waiting at a pier somewhere in the colonial East for the return of his wife who has been on a visit home. He is uxorious to an extreme, and has created an image of his wife so perfect that no woman could reasonably be expected to live up to it. When she arrives, she tells him about something that happened aboard the ship which doesn’t fit his picture of her, and his perfect image is destroyed. I didn’t like this one so much – it is rather darker, and I found it a little unclear as to whether the wife had truly transgressed or whether it was all in the mind of the husband. I didn’t find the husband as believable or as sympathetic as I had her three main characters in the other stories, which I suspected was perhaps because Mansfield wasn’t as good at getting into the male mind as the female. It’s a good story, and beautifully written again, but for me it was the weakest of the four.

Wonderfully emotional stories, especially the first three, that manage to be uplifting even when they’re sad, mainly because of Mansfield's sympathy for her characters. She is kind to them and asks for the reader’s indulgence for their weaknesses – this reader was happy to oblige. Lovely!

Bittersweet and beautifully read...

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Loved the beautiful reading by Dame Peggy Ashcroft. The 4 stories really came to life.

Excellent

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