All the Ms: Mansfield to Marai

Katherine Mansfield: I read a few of Mansfield’s short stories. They were about couples. Rather lightweight now,  at the time (1910s-1920s), they were cutting edge. Mansfield’s production goes along with a prior post–the early to mid-1900s saw a growing interest in what makes romance/marriage work. 

The interest is still there, of course, but at the time, it was considered Modern with the full-weight of the capitalized word.   

Many Bloody Returns includes various tales about vampires. I read the short piece “Grave-Robbed” by P.N. Elrod. I’ve read several books by P.N. Elrod with the protagonist Jack Fleming, a vampire P.I. in 1920s gangster Chicago. I've enjoyed the books and I enjoyed the short story! 

Alessandro Manzoni: The Betrothed is apparently a very famous classic novel from Italy. I love coming across these books! This one seems to fall into the Hugo/Dickens/Dumas tradition–very long book about all kinds of stuff set in the further past. The translation appears to be excellent. 

Jo-Ann Mapson: Finding Casey begins with reflections on a house, which is a surprisingly trope-like way to begin a novel! It also involves a ghost, which is fairly interesting.

Sandor Márai: I often feel like all books on a particular shelf fall into the same category. Marai's Esther’s Inheritance is one of many books on a shelf that begin the same way: a narrator reminisces for several pages before the action begins. I can handle description as a way to begin a novel. And I love dialog (and use that approach myself). But memoir-type reflections don’t strike me as particularly…anything. Where’s the story?