I read this 7 or 8 years ago. It is a collection of 35 short stories, 20 letters written by Mansfield, and 18 works of criticism from the smarty-farty's. Lets just say that I didn't enjoy reading this book.
First of all, for some reason I am not a big fan of short stories. Which is weird because it seems like they would be awesome. After all, you can start and finish a whole tale in one sitting. But it seems like most short story writers just ramble about non-eventful activities and I'm supposed to come away with some deep meaning from it all. No thank you. It has been a while since I read Mansfield's stories but I recall that there was a lot of boredom on my end and I was like, "Oops, looks like I didn't catch the deep meaning of a story about a guy giving a dill pickle to a bunch of people." It's true, Mansfield's 'A Dill Pickle' is not the type of tale I enjoy. Looking over the stories there are only two that I recognize that I remember enjoying. The first one is 'The Woman at the Store' which is actually really, really good and the type of short story that I wish was more common. The second one is 'Millie.' Both stories actually have some excitement involved with pretty cool endings (is that so much to ask?). The other 33 were meh.
Second of all, I have stated before that I don't usually like reading scholarly criticism. And this was no exception. And yet I read them all anyway (why do I do it?).
But, the saving grace, believe it or not, was the letters. She is a good writer (I just didn't enjoy her stories) and her honest letters to her acquaintances were kind of fun to read.
A quote from one of her letters to Garnet Trowell (the son of her cello teacher and her "lover". Garnet's parents forced them to separate and he was the father of the child Mansfield miscarried. Juicy stuff): "[I]t is the same with Love. The more you give me, the more I feel that you enrich my nature so I can give you more."
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