How does a city make a
writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ‘ravishing, immersing read’,
A Strange Beautiful
Excitement
is a ‘wild ride’ through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood.
From the grubby,
wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author
Redmer Yska, himself
raised in Karori, retraces Mansfield’s old ground: the sights, sounds and
smells
of the rickety colonial
capital, as experienced by the budding writer.
Along the way his
encounters and dogged research – into her Beauchamp ancestry, the social
landscape, the festering,
deadly surroundings – lead him (and us) to re-evaluate long-held conclusions
about
the writer’s shaping
years. They also lead to a thrilling discovery.
This haunting and
beautifully vivid book combines fact and fiction, biography and memoir, as
Yska rediscovers
Mansfield’s Wellington, unearthing her childhood as he goes, shining a new
lamp on old territory.
It’s not enough to say I
immensely enjoyed A Strange Beautiful Excitement... it’s simply splendid.
– Dame Fiona Kidman
...the best account I
have ever read of Wellington and Karori as they were in Mansfield’s day ...
Vivid
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