Oh, how delightful it is to fall in love for the first time! How exciting to go to your first dance when you are a girl of eighteen! But life can also be hard and cruel, if you are young and inexperienced and travelling alone across Europe . . . or if you are a child from the wrong social class . . . or a singer without work and the rent to be paid.
Set in Europe and New Zealand, these nine stories by Katherine Mansfield dig deep beneath the appearances of life to show us the causes of human happiness and despair.
I wish I could get through into looking-glass house,' Alice said. 'Let's pretend that the glass has gone soft and . . . Why, I do believe it has! It's turning into a kind of cloud!' A moment later Alice is inside the looking-glass world. There she finds herself part of a great game of chess, travelling through forests and jumping across brooks. The chess pieces talk and argue with her, give orders and repeat poems . . . It is the strangest dream that anyone ever had . . .
Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective the world has ever seen, and he knows it. As the famous bank-robber, John Clay, says to him, 'You think of everything, Mr Holmes. You're very clever.' People come to him with problems that no one, not even the police, can solve. Holmes sits, and thinks, and smokes his pipe, and in the end he finds the answer.
In these plays, based on two of his stories, Holmes, helped by his old friend, Dr Watson, uses his great intelligence to solve two unusual and interesting cases.
Allegra is an unusual name. It means 'happy' in Italian, but the little girl in this story is sometimes very sad. She is only five years old, but she tells Adrian, her new friend, that she is going to die soon. How does she know? And who is the other Allegra? The girl in a long white nightdress, who has golden hair and big blue eyes. The girl who comes only at night, and whose hands and face are cold, so cold . . .
"The bride wore a long white dress, with flowers in her hair. After the wedding, there was a party, and people gave presents to the bride and groom." This wedding was nearly two thousand years ago, in Rome. Some things don't change. But some things do. Today you can have a wedding on a mountain, or under the sea, or "Elvis" can sing for you. And different things happen in different places. Little birds made of paper, small trees, money in the bride's shoe, and lots of noise - they are all important for weddings somewhere. Welcome to the wonderful world of weddings!
