With irony and an unfailing eye for the telling detail, Gallant weaves stories of such intricate simplicity and spare complexity that critics have rightly compared her with Henry James and Anton Chekhov. Readers will discover, or rediscover, the pleasure of reading one of the finest writers of our time.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In these 52 stories, which were written in over almost as many years and published mostly in the New Yorker, Gallant shows herself to be one of the century's most accomplished, and least conventional, writers of short fiction. Gallant was never afraid to push the boundaries of the form: many of her longer stories stray into novella territory, and even her shortest pieces often defy the expectations created in the first few pages. Gallant's characters are almost all exiles of one sort or another, 20th century seekers often marked by World War II and its aftermath. Gallant, a Canadian expatriate, spent much of her life in Paris, and that city of exiles and emigres provides the setting for some of her most memorable stories.
From Publishers Weekly
A reporter determined to write fiction, Gallant left her Montreal home in 1950 and settled in Paris a decade later. By the time she took up residence on the Left Bank, she'd already been publishing in the New Yorker for nearly 10 years, and she's continued to appear there all but exclusively. Of the 119 stories she's contributed over a span of five decades, 51 are collected here in the kind of volume that causes an author's reputation to take quantum leaps?even if that reputation is already, like Gallant's, sterling. (A 52nd story first published in Mademoiselle completes the mix.) A preface in which Gallant ruminates about her life and the source of her tales shimmers with the same crystalline prose as the stories themselves. It's clear that Gallant's own expatriate history has dictated her fictive concerns. Her characters seem to wander through her stories carting battered valises that hold their various eccentricities, complicated political affiliations and quirky nationalistic tendencies. Drawn from a population roughly the size of Charles Dickens's and set down on the page with a Jane Austen-like wit, Gallant's actively inactive protagonists always endeavor to do the best they can with what they've got. If that's not good enough, they trick themselves into believing it'll do. Carol in "The Other Paris" agrees to marry Howard because she thinks he'll make her life magical. When he doesn't, she sticks by him because she knows that, years later, she "would think, once more, 'Paris,' and after a while... she would remember it and describe it and finally believe it as it had never been at all." Gallant arranges the stories by decade, with four additional sections devoted to recurring characters. Perhaps the most vivid of these is Linnet Muir, an autobiographical figure who often describes her girlhood. In "The Doctor," Linnet, remarking sardonically on her strict upbringing, says: "Whatever I was doing, I would be told to do something else immediately.... Parents in bitter climates have a fixed idea about driving children out to be frozen." Another repeater is Henri Grippes, a "French man of letters" whose self-possession is satirized elegantly in four stories. In "Grippes and Poche," the intrepid author confounds himself by using his taxman?to whom he thinks he's quite superior?as the hero of a series of novels. For years it's seemed that Gallant was designing her stories as exquisite homesteads for readers to inhabit at their leisure. The publication of this important book makes it apparent that what she's actually been constructing is a gleaming skyscraper on the literary landscape. 15,000 first printing.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A summer days book, a rainy day book a book for all seasons,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant (Hardcover)
This collection of wonderful short stories is THE book to take on vacation, or have at hand when you're stuck sick in bed, or sitting waiting for that delayed flight. Mavis Gallant tells readers they should read one of her stories, "[s]hut the book. Read something else. Stories can wait." And that's the best way to read a collection of short stories as good as this. Dip into one story -- then randomly let it fall open to another. This is not a cheap box of chocolates with hidden pink creme fillings: these stories are Godiva truffles. Perfect, beautifully balanced, each unique but equally satisfying. In this collection, written across 40 years of her life, Mavis Gallant gives us windows that allow us to really feel the inner worlds of her characters. A Swiss grandmother turns an obligatory visit into a revelation. A young Canadian girl discovers her self worth in the shallow reflection of expatriot Englishmen. A sophisticated couple on a foreign posting realize they value their lives on a yardstick of social invitations. A Spanish town weighs the value of a crushed arm. How can one writer know the hidden souls of so many different kinds of people? Well, all that matters is that she does. Treat yourself to a 10 lb. box of Godiva chocolates. Treat yourself to a modern de Maupassant. Treat yourself to the Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like the Bible...,
By
This review is from: The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant (Hardcover)
... this is a very cumbersome and hefty book. So maybe taking it on the airplane is not a great idea unless you want the shoulder strap of your carry-on grinding into your shoulder while the ten pounds worth of stylishly-cut pages carve a dent in your thigh. But it's the life's work of a genius, so let's not begrudge the size.
Properly, this book is great for reading in a comfortable chair with a really big mug of tea at your side. Like any truly great writer, Mavis Gallant picks the right words and writes clean, lucid sentences. What touches me so much are her themes of international mentalities and exile. In this era of jets, work visas, and emigration, these themes are very real and comprehensible to many of us. Another theme is the effects of war and wartime: to this I turn with the eye of an innocent, who is merely intrigued. I want my writers to be good judges of human nature, to drop clues and let me wallow in a bit of mystery, to let into me into their world on precisely defined terms. Mavis Gallant is worth reading again and again and again, world without end, amen. But don't even think about taking this cumbersome book anywhere public, unless, like the Bible, they come out with an edition with transparent pages and whole words as small as mustard seeds.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Now Out in Paperback,
This review is from: The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant (Hardcover)
Mavis Gallant is the one writer I carry around with me, want to have a bit of available at all times, because her stuff is so dense, rich, interesting, beautiful, unique. The tone is its strength. August, calm, serious, patient, free, amusing, light - cinematic even. She has great graphic skills and economy of means and dwells in the minds of her characters. If you like that kind of revelation in a world of travel, wandering, bourgeois bohemia, children - you've found your writer. Her characters are all in a bit of spiritual stew but they bear up well enough via surrender...to the facts, as it were. There aren't many real whiners here. Gallant is interested in mental coping strategies and in this way is similar to William Trevor, tho lighter and dealing generally with less severe trauma. I wouldn't put it on a par with any kind of bible, however, because, tho there is some, there isn't any kind of complete redemption here. One needs more than Gallant to get through. There is a lot of light, but she leaves it to nature itself, subtly present - the background and hidden engine. Her characters don't understand what is going on but she shows us that things do need to be this way. I read a story and put the book away for a few days or more. One can return to her again and again for unfailing artistry - artistic inspiration in fact. (I am traveling in Canada and I have found a new paperback version of this very edition, cover and all, currently stocked at Chapters book stores.)
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