The concisely titled Stories by Katherine Mansfield is a selection of 27 short stories from the author's body of work. Mansfield was a prominent modernist writer and the bulk of these stories are of that style. Mansfield appears to be often compared to Virginia Woolf, though I suspect that has to do with the fact that the two women were friends. In my opinion, Mansfield's stories are much more readable than Woolf's work (which, admittedly, I've read very little of).

I should mention here that I'm not a huge fan of short stories or modernism in general, both are really hit or miss for me, so I did have a bit of a hard time plugging through all of these. For a short book it seemed to take a while to finish. However, that probably has more to do with my own personal literary preferences than it does Mansfield's talents. The prose here really is quite lovely.

Most of the stories began and/or ended abruptly. I'd say each was more character study than narrative based. The stories focus on a variety of themes, although loss of innocence, death, and relationships -- marriages/parental/siblings/etc. -- popped up frequently. The pieces I enjoyed most included "The Woman at the Store" (which was an early story and not written in the modern style), "Marriage à la Mode," "The Daughters of the Late Colonel," and "The Garden-Party," among others. ( )