Bliss & Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
These short stories are epic. Radiant.
I particularly like Mr Reginald Peacock’s Day. (I listened to it as an audiobook, and the narrator did a lot of interpretation of the class relations via accent.)
We get what might be the last glimpse of the protagonist’s genuine self. He has this terrible fake self he uses to seduce his singing ‘students’. He calls them all “dear lady” and says “I should be charmed”. Everybody loves it. This is how he makes his living.
He’s terrible to his wife. He’s determined to see this pretty reasonable-seeming woman as his enemy.
He comes home from a party where they all love him, and he sees his sleeping wife. He had been buzzing with his success. But now weird feelings come over him. He wants somebody to understand him. To know his genuine self. He decides to make one last attempt to be friends with his wife. He wakes her up. He grabs her hands.
He says, “dear lady” and “I should be charmed”, and the story ends.
But we understand that this is his curse of fakeness descending on his own head. He’s gotten so used to being fake to women that he can’t be honest even when he wants to. He’s gone too far into the abyss. Not so far that he can’t see the surface. But way too far to ever get back.
We can see the whole rest of these characters’ lives. It’s a marvel of concision.
Most of these stories are gems like that. They say much more than they say. The last sentence turns like a key in a lock and the whole thing folds itself up like origami in your mind.