Listening to the Silence

This a very short little story, about 10 pages long. The story captures a single day during which a well-to-do family in colonial New Zealand throws a garden party while down the lane in the slums they mourn the death of a man who leaves behind him a wife and half-a-dozen children. I was really intrigued by the juxtoposition of the party and the attitudes of those attending against the sadness of the death itself. It's a very good introduction to modernist literature, though like most short stories, it left me wanting more. The version I read was only one entry in an anthology of Mansfield's work and I will definitely be reading more.