The Story-Teller
By Kathleen Jones,
Penguin Viking, $65
Katherine Mansfield will always be considered one of New Zealand's finest writers, and one of the most written about.
This biography is a deep, compelling expose of an enigmatic writer and woman.
Author Kathleen Jones is both a voice and a channel for others in this
consummate biography and she is not afraid to infer or to qualify.
Letters, journals, published and unpublished works, essays and memoirs of many people, none more so than Mansfield, provided rich grounds for Jones.
The result reveals much about a literary great who has in the past been misrepresented, partly through less complete biographies.
One of many insights readers of Mansfield and of past biographies will gain is the harm done to her reputation - and to some of her stories - by her man-of-letters husband John Middleton Murray, both during and after her death. Middleton Murray is as large a character in this book and as uncompromisingly portrayed as Mansfield.
Katherine Mansfield - The Story Teller sheds light on the mores, prejudices and tragedy of the life and times of Mansfield; a stillborn child, abortions, venereal disease, war, medical misdiagnosis, loneliness, convalescence and the struggle to be at peace during her last weeks at retreat at Fontainebleu.
This book is also about an intellectual and literary era - the Bloomsbury crowd, D.H. Laurence, et al.
Among them is the gifted Virginia Woolf who declared Mansfield's was the only writing of which Woolf was ever jealous.
This book is hard to put down. If you never read another biography about Mansfield, at least read this one.
It is a brilliant work about a brilliant and flawed storyteller.
