Bliss, and other stories

About the book

Mansfield's collection includes Prelude, Bliss, The Little Governess, A Dill Pickle, and other stories in which a shift of attention can change the significance of an entire scene. Domestic arrangements and social conversation supply detailed surfaces, while desire, loneliness, embarrassment, or resentment move beneath them. The title story follows Bertha Young's exhilarating sense of happiness into an evening whose meanings she cannot fully control. Elsewhere, children perceive adult life at an angle, or a brief encounter exposes the distance between two people's memories. Mansfield often allows competing perceptions to coexist without resolving them into a single explanation. Her precision makes small details consequential, asking readers to remain alert when the most confident account of an experience may also be the least complete.

• Perception and self-deception
• Intimacy
• Everyday estrangement

Why read it

For short stories in which a gesture, image, or altered point of view can make a familiar social world suddenly strange.

Short-story collection · English text