The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
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The Garden Party

Author: Katherine Mansfield

Narrator: Emma Topping

Unabridged: 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/07/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

The Sheridan family is preparing to host a garden party. Laura is supposed to be in charge, but has trouble with the workers who appear to know better, and her mother (Mrs. Sheridan) has ordered lilies to be delivered for the party without Laura's approval. Her sister Jose tests the piano, and then sings a song in case she is asked to do so again later. After the furniture is rearranged, they learn that their neighbor Mr. Scott has died. While Laura believes the party should be called off, neither Jose nor their mother agrees. The party is a success, and later Mrs. Sheridan decides it would be good to bring a basket full of leftovers to the Scotts' house. She summons Laura to do so. Laura is shown into the poor neighbors' house by Mrs. Scott's sister, then sees the widow and her late husband's corpse. The sight of his dead body brings her to tears, and she runs off back to her own house, where she falls sobbing into her brother's arms.

Author Bio

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and settled in Europe to finish her education. She published her first short fiction in The New Age, then in Rhythm, whose editor, the British writer and critic John Middleton Murry, she soon married. Her writing contributed to the development of the stream of consciousness technique and to the modernist use of multiple viewpoints, and her style has had a powerful influence on subsequent writers in the same genre.

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