‘Katherine Mansfield, The Storyteller is a compelling narrative
of a writer's passion for her work, her growth to maturity and the
extraordinary trajectory which took a plump, awkward, rebellious little
girl from a rigidly conventional family halfway across the world and
into a culture of artistic, social and sexual experimentation. Kathleen
Jones' original research contributes to a fascinating portrait of
Mansfield's complex, secretive nature, her relationships and her struggle
against the incurable disease which threatened to swamp her talent
as it shortened her life. .... It is a fine achievement.’
HELEN DUNMORE , Booker Prize-winner
‘I read it with huge enjoyment - I think it’s by far the best Katherine
Mansfield biography yet - giving a truthful but still sympathetic
portrait, and very cleverly weaving in all Middleton Murry’s extraordinary
further marriages.’
JACQUELINE WILSON, novelist, patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society
“Jones.... writes with insight and verve, and an intelligent sympathy
not only for Mansfield, but for that entire cast ....What Jones has
brought off by using the voice of life as it occurs is to record the
details of Mansfield's experience with their ringing sense of immediacy.”
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VINCENT
O’SULLIVAN The Listener.
“Jones has brought to the work a scholar's regard for fact, a novelist's
regard for form, and a poet's regard for cadence. The test of a good
literary biography is whether it makes you want to reacquaint yourself
with the author's writing. This biography does just that.” More
Dr. SARAH SANDLEY The New Zealand Herald.
“Meticulous and indefatigable....I’m astonished at how much information
there is in this book...people say - What not another KM biograaphy?
- But in fact it’s a new story that hasn’t been told”
MARGARET SCOTT “ Editor of the collected letters of Katherine Mansfield