A review by bluedilly
All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything by Claire Harman

emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

4.5

I picked this up from the library on a whim, not even half expecting I would actually read it, but it ended up being one of my favourite books I've read this year.

Here were just a few of my favourite quotes from Mansfield's stories, journals, and letters:

Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. 

One must submit. Do not resist. Take it. Be overwhelmed. Accept it fully—make it part of Life. Everything in Life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness

Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Blood, and War

Minor: Child death, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Rape, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Pandemic/Epidemic