Katherine Mansfield was a prominent Modernist writer of short fiction, and one of New Zealand’s best-known authors. “At the Bay” is a story from her collection The Garden Party.

First Page:

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea mist. The big bush covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness... Continue reading book >>