The Aloe
“. . and the top of the cream jar flew through the air and rolled like a penny in a round on the linoleum and did not break. But for Kezia it had broken the moment it flew through the air and she picked it up, hot all over, put it on the dressing table and walked away, far too quickly – and airily.”
So ends The Aloe, New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield’s brightly finished picture of domestic life at the turn of the last century as seen through the clarifying lens of memory… And something... has been broken. Just as for Kezia the lid of the jar has come apart “the moment it flew through the air”, so what is caught here, in words, is a thing of fragments, held together as though by chance but never really whole. For the past from which this story is made, Katherine Mansfield’s past, her New Zealand past, her Wellington past, has been broken with long ago. They are the shattered pieces of it you are now holding in your hand.
Of course, for Mansfield, the great practitioner of the sliver, the “slice of life”, the European short story, the idea of pieces comes as no surprise.MoreLess
So ends The Aloe, New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield’s brightly finished picture of domestic life at the turn of the last century as seen through the clarifying lens of memory… And something... has been broken. Just as for Kezia the lid of the jar has come apart “the moment it flew through the air”, so what is caught here, in words, is a thing of fragments, held together as though by chance but never really whole. For the past from which this story is made, Katherine Mansfield’s past, her New Zealand past, her Wellington past, has been broken with long ago. They are the shattered pieces of it you are now holding in your hand.
Of course, for Mansfield, the great practitioner of the sliver, the “slice of life”, the European short story, the idea of pieces comes as no surprise.MoreLess
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