At the Bay

Virginia Woolf said of Katherine Mansfield that hers was "the only writing I have ever been jealous of," and At the Boy - previously unavailable in a standalone edition - is among Mansfield's masterpieces. Set against the dreamy, unassuming beauty of Crescent Bay - the stretch of sea beyond the New Zealand coast - Mansfield's modernist classic captures a single summer's day with the Burnell family and their intricate web of family and friends. Before sunrise, a shepherd hurries his flock along a sandy road; by dustk, everyone has returned home from their days at the beach, at the neighbor's, at work, and Mansfield has coolly revealed the dark undercurrent of domestic life. Known for her fierce independence and radical attitudes toward family life - "Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth," she wrote famously - Mansfield remains one of the most beguiling figures of the early twentieth century, and At the Bay is a haunting, timeless testament to her remarkable powers. -- from book flap.