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    In a German Pension
    In a German Pension
    In a German Pension
    Audiobook3 hours

    In a German Pension

    Written by Katherine Mansfield

    Narrated by Cathy Dobson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    First published in 1911, Katherine Mansfield's collection "In a German Pension" was inspired by her extended stay in a spa town in Bavaria in 1909, during which she suffered a miscarriage. The collection brought her instant fame and popularity as a short story writer, particularly as her amusing - though less than favourable - caricatures of the Germans were very popular at that time: - Germans at Meat -The Baron - The Sister of the Baroness - Frau Fischer - Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding - The Modern Soul - At Lehmann’s - The Luft Bad - A Birthday - The Child-who-was-tired - The Advanced Lady - The Swing of the Pendulum - A Blaze
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Door Consulting
    Release dateApr 13, 2013
    ISBN9781467668873
    Author

    Katherine Mansfield

    Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in New Zealand in 1888. Her father sent her and her sisters to school in London, where she was editor of the school newspaper. Back in New Zealand, she started to write short stories but she grew tired of her life there. She returned to Europe in 1908 and went on to live in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. A restless soul who had many love affairs, her modernist writing was admired by her peers such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, who published her story ‘Prelude’ on their Hogarth Press. In 1917 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and she died in France aged only thirty-four.

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    Reviews for In a German Pension

    3.5/5

    89 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      From the first paragraph of the first story, it is clear why this little collection caught the attention of the literary world. Katherine Mansfield dissects social interactions in a pithy and unapologetic way. She is particularly rough on men. Very ahead of her time, she has little respect for the institution of marriage or for family life and from her stories it would be hard to tell if she's ever seen a happy marriage or family. Some of her stories are funny, some pathetic, some beautiful and some devastating. She is a master of her craft and she leaves me cold.
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of short stories that are loosely tied to a group of guests who are "taking the cure" at a German pension. I liked them okay, but didn't love them. Some are darkly funny, but most are just depressing.
    • 3/5
      118/2020. A solid 3/5 for this earliest collection of Katherine Mansfield's short stories, which is well-written and was no doubt insightful, even daring, at the time but without so much to say to a society that's moved on.QuotesBrass: 'He stood in the kitchen puffing himself out, the buttons on his blue uniform shining with an enthusiasm which nothing but official buttons could possibly possess.'Edible: 'her yellow hair tastefully garnished with mauve sweet peas.'Motherhood: 'She turned towards Karl, who had rooted an old illustrated paper out of the [rubbish] receptacle and was spelling over an advertisement for the enlargement of Beautiful Breasts.'Legs: ' "I never walk," said the landlady; "when I go to Mindelbau my man drives me - I’ve more important things to do with my legs than walk them through the dust!" '
    • 4/5
       In the introduction, John Middleton Murry says that Katherine Mansfield was critical of these early stories. I would not ever challenge Mansfield’s judgment, but I did enjoy reading them. Some do take place in a German pension in which a young English woman narrates the goings on and her own observations of the comic social scenes. Others are purely German characters in a non-pension setting that raise more serious questions about marriage, childhood and love.
    • 4/5
      This was Katherine Mansfield's first collection of stories, published in 1911 when she was in her early twenties. The sto ries are told by a young married Englishwoman who is staying alone at a pension in a German spa town while taking the cure. As the guests tend to stay for weeks or even months, she has plenty of time to get to know their foibles, and the stories take a satirical look at her fellow guests, concentrating on their snobbish and obsequious regard for the aristocracy, and their withering disdain for everything English. The narrator is criticised for the huge breakfasts eaten by people in England and the habit of warming the pot when making tea, since after all we are not going to eat the teapot! Her fellow guests also dislike the cold temperament of the English, their unmusical nature, attitude to romance and dislike of discussing their health, although one lady did findsomething complimentary to say."Fish-blooded," snapped Frau Godowska. "Without soul, without heart, without grace. But you cannot equal their dress materials. I spent a week in Brighton twenty years ago, and the travelling cape I bought there is not yet worn out—the one you wrap the hot-water bottle in, Sonia."I found most of the stories funny, but the bit that made me laugh the most was the narrator's refusal to pander to Fräulein Sonia when she fainted theatrically in the street in "The Modern Soul"."I am going to faint here and now."I was frightened. "You can't," I said, shaking her."Come back to the pension and faint as much as you please. But you can't faint here. All the shops are closed. There is nobody about. Please don't be so foolish.""Here and here only!" She indicated the exact spot and dropped quite beautifully, lying motionless."Very well," I said, "faint away; but please hurry over it."She did not move. I began to walk home, but each time I looked behind me I saw the dark form of the modern soul prone before the hairdresser's window. Finally I ran, and rooted out the Herr Professor from his room. "Fraulein Sonia has fainted," I said crossly."Du lieber Gott! Where? How?""Outside the hairdresser's shop in the Station Road.""Jesus and Maria! Has she no water with her?"—he seized his carafe—"nobody beside her?""Nothing.""Where is my coat? No matter, I shall catch a cold on the chest. Willingly, I shall catch one... You are ready to come with me?""No," I said; "you can take the waiter.""But she must have a woman. I cannot be so indelicate as to attempt to loosen her stays.""Modern souls oughtn't to wear them," said I. He pushed past me and clattered down the stairs.
    • 4/5
      This collection is the third and last part of my Kindle edition of "Selected Stories" (the first 2 parts, "The Garden Party and Other Stories" & "Bliss and Other Stories", I read in 2013). I found this collection distinct from the other 2 in that the stories are almost chapters in a "slice of life" novel, describing the various characters & events that occur while the main character, an Englishwoman, is staying at this pension (sort of like a boarding house).
    • 4/5
      Mansfield is a great writer, she has facility and wit. The stories flow, they are about ordinary things, yet extraordinary.However, this collection contains a story - The Child Who Was Tired - that also appears in a collection of Chekov's short stories. This bothered me years ago and it still bothers me, along with V. Woolf's comment that K. Mansfield's fingernails weren't any too clean.