Set in a spa for persons with mostly mild physical complaints, the stories are all connected. The stories
are satirical and minutely observed portraits of everyday life. A central character, a visiting Englishwoman, narrates the action. From the first sortie in the collection, “Germans at meat”, she must defend English tea-brewing practices to a table of German scoffers. The writer sketches mournful scenes with a brisk mix of cruelty and pathos. It is sometimes bemused. Banal situations are savored in a poetic way. Otherwise, she retaliates good-naturally, sending quips directly over their heads. The reader may pick up indications of the tension between Great British and Germany, which finally exploded in the World war I.
It is the first book of Katherine Mansfield, a marvelous book and a master collection in the art of the short story. However, Katherine Mansfield grew disenchanted with it. She said about that book : "I cannot have the ''German Pension'' republished under any circumstances. It''s far too IMMATURE....It''s positively juvenile and besides that it''s not what I mean: it''s a lie." These early stories contain the embryonic treatment of the themes she would continue to explore--the essential aloneness and isolation of the human predicament; the conflict between love and disillusionment, between wistful childlike idealism and life''s harsh reality, between beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering.
The stories are semi-autobiographical. They are plenty of snobbery and impolite manners of the guests at the pension. In such stories as “The sister of the Baroness” the writer created funny vignettes of life at a German spa en the early nineteenth
century.
There are thirteen stories: Germans at meal, The Baron, The sister of the Baroness, Frau Fischer, Frau Brechnmacher attends a Wedding, Tha Modern Soul, At Lehmann’s, The luft Bad, A Birthday, The Child-who-was-tired, Tha Advanced Lady, A swing of the Pendulum and A Blaze. All marvelous.