After some 90 years, Mansfield may still be the finest writer of short stories in the English language. Her language, approach, dialogue, narrative voice and sense of detail are more modern and incisive than 90% of the academic-writing-school stories turned out today. The tension between her short, tripping, light-hearted, fragmented sentences and an often unstated sense of sadness bordering on menace is enough to make you sweat.

Stories like "The Garden Party," one of her best-known, walk the line between class-conflict and personal awkwardness. Others, such as "Miss Brill" and "Marriage a la Mode," deal with the horror of isolated and shattered lives. I think my favorite is "At the Beach," ostensibly about the lives of several vacationing lounge-abouts, but really about life as it is, for anyone, a simple state of convoluted being.