The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield — A Perfect Afternoon Shadowed by Tragedy

About this episode

The episode features a reading of Katherine Mansfield's classic short story 'The Garden Party', exploring themes of wealth and mortality.

A perfect summer morning, a lawn being readied for the most delightful garden party of the season, and a death just down the hill that no one quite knows what to do with. Katherine Mansfield’s 1922 masterpiece follows young Laura Sheridan as the giddy pleasures of her family’s wealth, a hat, a band, trays of lilies, run headlong into the reality of a working man killed in the lane below. Tender, ironic, and quietly devastating, “The Garden Party” is one of the great short stories of the twentieth century, and it ends on a sentence Laura cannot finish. “The Garden Party” was written by Katherine Mansfield and first published in 1922. If this reading stayed with you, please share Litreading with a fellow lover of fine stories and leave a five-star rating or review, it’s the simplest way to help the work reach new listeners. Discover our multiverse of short stories at shortstoryverses.com. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this story, buy me an e-book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/donmcdonald or click FOLLOW Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Short Storyverses

Topics covered

• summer
• wealth
• death
• family
• irony
• short story

Keywords

• Katherine Mansfield
• The Garden Party
• short story
• wealth
• death
• family
• irony

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Garden Party

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