The Garden Party and Other Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

I had often heard of Katherine Mansfield in relation to Virginia Woolf. They knew each other and talked about writing a lot. (And Virginia was not kind in her journals.) I thought that I hadn't read anything by her until I recognized one of the stories from this book - "Her First Ball" - which is one of the better ones and must have been anthologized somewhere. These stories are very modernist, which is to say brief, eliptical, often unresolved, often focused on setting, feeling like sketches rather than complete artistic objects, but also feeling closer to life as a result. Several are set in New Zealand although there are very few clues that this is the case. A few themes do crop up across the whole collection: the contemplation of death within life, the anxiety of inter class relations, the richness of interior life. I thought "The Garden Party", "The Stranger", "Her First Ball", and "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" were the best. There were then 5 mid tier stories that I felt were quite worth while. And unfortunately there were 6 I really didn't car for. I think I will probably read one of her other collections some day since apparently her later stories have a somewhat different feel, but I don't think I will be in a big hurry to prioritize them.