7 h 27 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
How much can a dinner party, a chance meeting, or a brief silence reveal about the feelings we hide?
In Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss, and Other Stories, ordinary life becomes strange and charged with feeling. Prelude follows the Burnell family into a new home, where adults and children share rooms but inhabit different worlds. In Bliss, Bertha Young’s intense happiness shapes her view of her marriage, her child, and her dinner guests.
Other encounters expose the distance between affection and understanding. In A Dill Pickle, former lovers remember their relationship differently. Sun and Moon places children at the edge of an adult celebration, while The Little Governess follows a young woman whose journey toward employment tests her trust in strangers.
What you’ll discover
- A household of separate worlds Enter the Burnells’ new home, where childhood perceptions meet domestic duties and adult dissatisfaction.
- Happiness that fills a room Follow Bertha Young as overwhelming joy colours everything she sees in her home and guests.
- One past, different memories Listen as former lovers reveal how little a shared experience guarantees a shared understanding.
- Through a child’s eyes Notice the details children catch while the adult world remains bewildering and out of reach.
- The weight of small things Discover how a meal, a remembered sound, or silence carries desire, resentment, and loneliness.
Who will love it
Readers who love short stories built from small moments, sharp dialogue and sudden flashes of feeling, and anyone who enjoys watching people say one thing while wanting another.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A family moves and leaves the children behind
- The new house shows each grown-up wanting something else
- A young writer tells his own story and flatters himself
- Bliss falls on a woman who cannot say what it is
- Two stories show how a mood can shift in a room
- Hunger and pride in a boarding house and a hotel
- A vain singer and two children at a party
- Three stories of misjudged kindness and love
- Nerves, quarrels and the shape of the collection
Who’s who
- KeziaA small, watchful girl in Prelude who notices what the grown-ups miss and feels frightened in the empty old house.
- Linda BurnellThe tired mother in Prelude who feels her home coming alive around her and keeps her own feelings about her husband secret.
- Stanley BurnellA hearty, proud businessman who loves his bargain house and his family, yet never sees how his wife really feels.
- Beryl FairfieldLinda's restless sister, who plays a part for everyone and hates the false self she sees in the mirror.
- Bertha YoungA young wife and mother in Bliss who is overwhelmed by a joy she cannot explain and wants to share with her guest.
- Raoul DuquetteA young Paris writer who tells the story of Dick and Mouse while admiring and mocking himself.
- Miss Ada MossA stout contralto in Pictures who tramps London in search of film work with one and threepence in her bag.
- Reginald PeacockA singing teacher who admires his own voice and expects his wife and pupils to admire it too.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 7 h 27 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Felicidad y otros cuentos
by Katherine Mansfield · 1920
A family leaves town in a buggy, and a small girl explores the empty house they are leaving and feels afraid.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What does a house feel like to a child who cannot sleep in it yet? Katherine Mansfield opens this book of fourteen stories with a family on a moving day, then moves through Paris cafés, dinner parties, Bloomsbury boarding houses and a night train.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A family moves and leaves the children behind
On moving day there is no room in the buggy for the two younger girls, Lottie and Kezia.
The girls stay with a neighbour, Mrs Samuel Josephs, and eat bread and dripping among her noisy children. Kezia bites a gate into her bread and swallows a tear before the boys can see it. Later she wanders through the emptied house, finds a pillbox she could keep a bird's egg in, and feels something frightening waiting behind her. At dusk the storeman, Fred, carries both girls off on his dray through the dark.
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What is Bliss and Other Stories about?
It is a collection of fourteen stories by Katherine Mansfield. Each shows a short, sharply seen stretch of life, such as a family's move, a dinner party, a boarding house or a train journey, and the feelings people hide.
What is Prelude about in Bliss and Other Stories?
Prelude follows the Burnell family as they move from town to a country house. It is told through the Burnell children, their mother Linda, her sister Beryl, their grandmother and the handyman, and it ends the early scenes of the family settling in.
What does the pear tree symbolize in Katherine Mansfield's Bliss?
The pear tree in Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss becomes Bertha Young’s private symbol of her intense happiness. As she hosts a dinner party and seeks a connection with Pearl Fulton, the tree reflects the joy she struggles to express and suggests how fragile that feeling may be.
The author
Katherine Mansfield
1888–1923 · New Zealand short story writer
Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand-born writer who transformed the modern short story in her brief life — Virginia Woolf admitted Mansfield's was the only writing she was ever jealous of. The Garden Party, and Other Stories catches whole lives inside small, luminous moments.
More by Katherine Mansfield
All 2 booksMore like this
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