Selected by Vincent O’Sullivan, this collection gathers Mansfield’s New Zealand writing from the earliest pieces through to the later stories in which distance, memory and home become things.

These are stories full of heat, gardens, class and girlhood, written with Mansfield’s whip-like skill to make a room, a gesture or a silence suddenly feel psychologically huge. New Zealand is so vivid, and shimmering, and textured in the work. It takes on life much more than a remembered homeland by being continually reconstructed through exile, resentment, tenderness and imagination. The stories move between vivid physical detail and an almost unstable interiority, where ordinary social scenes can tip quickly into estrangement, desire or menace.

Oxford University Press New Zealand, 1997 hardback. Very good used condition with light shelf wear and minor edge rubbing.