How to write about a world of music in detail, yet making it entertaining for the reader, was one of the research challenges of this story. My examination of the writings of one of New Zealand’s most significant authors, Katherine Mansfield, provided me insight into ways of managing the blend of domestic interiors, growing social awareness, and the use of irony in the narrative voice. It experiments with ways of updating the theme and tone of several of Mansfield’s ‘Garden Party’ stories: in particular ‘At the Bay’, ‘A doll’s house’ and ‘Her first ball’. Set in the 1970s in small-town New Zealand, the story also references elements of New Zealand’s cultural life; its characters are based on musicians, collectors and musicologists who lived in Wellington and Christchurch in this era. Research contribution Felix Mendelssohn’s music emerges out of an adolescent sensibility, and is still often used by those working with troubled teenagers because it reflects something of the growing rebellion and social awareness of young people at this transition point. This story explores ways of combining musical and narrative expression in ways that exploit the comic, resisting how the more conventional serious tone used in ‘growth’ or maturation stories.