Lead Review
- Book: The Montana Stories
- Location: London, New Zealand (Aotearoa), The South of France (Le Midi)
- Author: Katherine Mansfield
This is a curious read for the TripFiction team as the setting for her writing is very strong, but the stories and jottings themselves are from Katherine Mansfield’s imagination, whilst IN Switzerland.
At the end of May 1921 Katherine Mansfield, aged 32, was seriously ill with TB. Staying at the Hotel Château de Belle Vue (and later at the Hotel d’Angleterre) in Sierre in the Rhone Valley she saw an advertisement for Chalet des Sapins high above Sierre at a place called Montana-sur-Sierre (now Crans Montana).
Settled there she got to work on writing and this is a collection of her work written whilst she was in Switzerland. The chalet was “so high up (5000 feet above the sea) that a cool breeze filters through from Heaven, and the forests are always airy…the windows look over the tree tops across a valley to snowy peaks the other side”. Clearly an inspirational setting for writing!
The stories are very much of an era and cover all manner of situations. Musings on why couples stay together, little vignettes of card games, a mother putting her baby to bed; an outing in the Picton boat where the hard brown soap would not lather, the stiff sheets…
She may have often been lying in bed, but in her mind she was travelling. At points she was in England, bringing to life some quintessentially English situations, and off to the South of France and New Zealand, where she was born. The stories are put together chronologically and as the book nears its end, she clearly becomes more preoccupied with mortality….
The stories and fragments – some are left unfinished – are nicely brought together in this edition. The book itself is beautifully presented, in the trademark colours of Persephone Press, a gorgeous lining and matching bookmark.
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