{"id":1452,"date":"2025-10-18T03:41:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T03:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/mountaindevil\/?p=1452"},"modified":"2025-10-18T03:46:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T03:46:39","slug":"a-dill-pickle-katherine-mansfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/?p=1452","title":{"rendered":"A Dill Pickle \u2013 Katherine Mansfield"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recommend: No<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moving up in your career in finance has a few consequences for your bank account. But there are other little perks as well. You get taken out to dinner by brokers who have to pay for your cocktails even as you wonder, if they were being true and honest, whether they hate themselves. There\u2019s the sick elation as you walk out of the office at 5pm, as the grad glances at your back, texting his parents that he will be home late. And then there\u2019s the fact that sometimes you can talk to your clients about books, if you hide it well enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During one of these conversations, the chat window sheepishly dragged to a corner of my screen my boss can\u2019t see, I said I was reading my first Katherine Mansfield. Before this book, Katherine Mansfield was some icon of literature to me. I never knew really what she was about but important writers referenced her. Ali Smith wrote an entire short story where a relationship is torn apart by the husband\u2019s obsession with studying Mansfield\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That reverence didn\u2019t extend very far in the finance community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA quick Google has confirmed that it is not something I would be interested in,\u201d said the client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"366\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image.png 366w, https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image-227x300.png 227w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 366px) 100vw, 366px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I can\u2019t disagree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mansfield\u2019s work feels so dated. Nearly all the short stories within <em>A Dill Pickle <\/em>make me feel like I am absorbing a season of Bridgerton. There is a ribbon shop with a testy attendant. A ball where young woman ditches a slimy older man. Some kind of free weekly concert in city park amphitheatre where there\u2019s a competition to see what old lady has the best fur hat (sorry, toque). The tensions are painfully quaint. One story, named <em>The Doll\u2019s House<\/em>, makes a whole hoo-ha over which ten-year-old gets to see a dollhouse first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were even words I needed to look up because they are so archaic, falling under the \u201chistorical\u201d category in Google dictionary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>toque: a small cap or bonnet\u00a0worn by a man or woman.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>brougham: a specific type of horse-drawn carriage, a style of early automobile body, or a place name like a street or former children&#8217;s home<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Katherine Mansfield is widely lauded as a master of the short story but I didn\u2019t see anything masterful in her constructions. Each story is neatly one dimensional. Characters seem to occupy a limited inner life. These short stories are like episodes of the Summer I Turned Pretty if they were a product of the 1920s: character motivation is simple, attempts at humour basic, and romance springs out of every plot, even though the characters\u2019 chemistry is strained at best. On two occasions Mansfield tries out a twist ending. She hides information from the reader (eg. a telegram is received at the conclusion of a story but the reader doesn\u2019t get shown its content). These fall flat both times and hinder the pacing of the story, leaving the reader unnecessarily confused over what should be a very simple plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two best stories of the collection rely on the timeless quality on wishing your circumstances were different. My favourite story of the collection was the titular <em>A Dill Pickle<\/em>. The protagonist meets a old male friend (maybe even flame) for the first time in years at a caf\u00e9. At the start, the pair enjoy reconnecting and recollecting past scenes of their relationship. There is nuance in <em>A Dill Pickle<\/em>, even from the start, that is missing in other stories. Memory lane begins sweetly enough but each side recalls the past with different emphasis, and different levels of care. As the conversation progresses, it is revealed that this friend treats our protagonist as a fond but vague memory that represents just one of many stories in his own narrative. He goes on to recount the many countries he has visited and speaks of the many friends made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cAh, when I was in Russia\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She broke in: \u201cYou\u2019ve really been to Russia?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh yes. I was there for over a year. Have you forgotten how we used to talk of going there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNo, I\u2019ve not forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This man has lived out all of the dreams that our protagonist gave up on long ago. Then to learn that these dreams were even explicitly shared between the two when they were young, and she\u2019s since been cut out of them. It\u2019s devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Tiredness of Rosabel<\/em> is the second of these more relatable stories. It\u2019s not as subtle as <em>A Dill Pickle<\/em>, nor is the scope as far reaching. It is, however, a fine slice of life depiction of a young woman yearning for circumstances out of her reach. The eponymous Rosabel is a shop attendant at work when a beautiful rich young couple come into the store. Later, after a boring commute home, she wonders of the woman, <em>\u201csuppose they changed places\u201d\u2026<\/em> An extended daydream precedes a literal dream about the joys of this other life that Rosabel does not in reality own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are pockets of fine writing in <em>A Dill Pickle<\/em>. On the whole, though, it smells musty. Many scenes play in my mind with an aged sepia tinge. It\u2019s not really something I am interested in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And because her heritage was that tragic optimism, which is all too often only the inheritance of youth, still half asleep, she smiled, with a little nervous tremor round her mouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}