My Katherine Mansfield Project

'It amalgamates memory and fiction and research and journal so sensitively and in such an original way that I came away feeling Gunn had escaped all the old hackneyed ways of writing about influence and created something wholly her own... It really lives. All of it.'

-- John Carey

'My Katherine Mansfield Project is a book to be treasured by anyone who has left home and moved away... [it] is an enchanting - and at times haunting - essay, as well as a moving tribute to Mansfield. The publisher, Notting Hill Editions, specializes in "reinvigorating the essay as a literary form", and Kirsty Gunn's offering is a triumph of the genre. The book is also a lovely object, stitched with red ribbon, and with a dove-grey cloth cover stamped with striking white-and-red print. Inside, the page numbers are red and chapter titles have red embellishments. It is a tribute to the book as art form; for once, one really can judge a book by its beautifully produced cover.' 

-- Gerri Kimber * Times Literary Supplement *

'A beautiful and mood-provoking book...the writing went into my consciousness and I felt the loneliness, the sadness, the love and identification with Katherine Mansfield...It was beautiful.'

-- Jane Campion

'Kirsty Gunn is a deep thinker; a maverick, an entertainer, and a great writer.'

-- Deborah