The Aloe

‘It was not sadness exactly, but a kind of aching sweetness.‘ One of Katherine Mansfield‘s forgotten gems, and a precursor to what would become her acclaimed Prelude, The Aloe is a tender, impressionistic portrait of family life that transforms the mundane into the extraordinary. First written in 1915, The Aloe is a deeply personal novella that captures Mansfield‘s childhood in New Zealand. Through a series of finely observed domestic vignettes, the narrative follows the Burnell family, as they move to a new house on the outskirts of Wellington. Mansfield expertly conveys the subtleties of family dynamics: the exhausted yet appreciative father, the imaginative yet quickly maturing children, the inner emotional life of the mother. Through these characters, Mansfield asserts her ability to turn everyday moments into opportunities for exploring memory, belonging and identity. Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic. She was an important figurehead of the modernist movement, befriending the likes of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence amongst others. Her works regularly explored themes such as sexuality, religion and existentialism, and have been translated into twenty-five different languages across the world.