Matt Cowens

This (to my knowledge) is the first New Zealand example of the mash-up genre - it's superficially in the tradition of such books as [Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters], but in fact the spirit of this book is much more respectful towards the original stories by Katherine Mansfield, the great New Zealand short story writer of the early 20th century.

How well these Mansfield-with-added-horror stories work depends for me on the tone of the original stories (some but not all of which I'm familiar with). There is a good dose of New Zealand gothic in Mansfield stories such as "The Woman at the Store", and the extra elements of horror work very well here. In some of the other stories, they didn't work quite so well for me - but overall, the concept pays off and Matt and Debbie Cowens have done a very good job with this book.… (more)