"Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait" - Mavis Gallant. In 1950, "The New Yorker" accepted one of Mavis Gallant's short stories for publication and she has since become the one of the most accomplished and respected short story writers of her time. Gallant is an undisputed master whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience in her sweeping portraits set in Europe in the second half of the last century. An expatriate herself, her stories deal with exile, displacement, of love and of estranged emotions, but they are never conventional. This collection of fifty-two stories, written between 1953 and 1995, is timeless, to be savoured and re-read.
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Review
‘Awesome. These stories are the product of a daunting talent … triumphant’ -- London Review of Books
‘Gallant is funny, exacting and stern – in fact, an old fashioned moralist … Luminescent, subtle and lasting’ -- Guardian
‘Gallant is one of the great short-story writers of our time’ -- Michael Ondaatje
‘Gallant is funny, exacting and stern – in fact, an old fashioned moralist … Luminescent, subtle and lasting’ -- Guardian
‘Gallant is one of the great short-story writers of our time’ -- Michael Ondaatje
About the Author
Mavis Gallant was born in Montral and has lived in Paris for many years. She has written eleven books, including GREEN WATER, GREEN SKY, her first novel, and PARIS NOTEBOOKS: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Her latest collection of stories was ACROSS THE BRIDGE.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Kate Hopkins
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
A wonderful big collection of stories by a rather underestimated writer. Gallant has lived in Europe for much of her life, and these stories have a decidedly 'Continental' style, as well as being set for the most part in Europe (I found the Canadian stories were the ones I enjoyed least on a first read, but intend to give them another try). Gallant is a wonderfully clear-sighted recorder of life among the European bohemians and middle-classes. I particularly enjoyed 'Across the Bridge' (the story of a sweet but naive young Parisian girl trying to find true love), 'The Pegnitz Junction' (a journey across Germany made by a dreamy young student called Christine, her lover and her lover's little son), 'Baum, Gabriel' (about a jobbing German actor living in Paris, whose career reaches his nadir when he has to play a Nazi officer in a war film), 'Irina' (about a writer's widow and her small grandson) and 'Potter' (about a Polish academic visiting Paris and his unlikely love affair with an American student). There are lots of other excellent stories; Gallant writes particularly well about Paris in the second half of the 20th century and about Germany after World War II. They are not stories that you come away with (on the whole) with a warm glow - Gallant's tone is unsentimental and slightly ironic rather than romantic. And yet, she creates some very vivid and often likeable characters, and the stories will almost certainly leave you with a greater interest in the world than before you read them. A tip - read these stories interspersed with other fiction rather than trying the whole book in one go - as Gallant says, her stories are best treated as individual works of fiction, rather than as a collection.
Much recommended.
Much recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The New Yorker had exerpts from Mavis Gallant's Paris diaries in an issue I read recently. She wrote about selling her clothes and almost everything she had so that she could buy food and pay her rent while waiting and hoping to sell some of her stories. She waited for a cheque to arrive. She was starving and wrote about being woozy with hunger but she would not give up. Two stories sold to The New Yorker and her career as a writer was launched. This is but one of her many collections of brilliant short stories. They are not so much stories as a series of snapshots and descriptions of a character. The preface, explaining how she came to write the stories, is absolutely facinating.
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