Overhead in a Balloon [Hardcover]

Mavis Gallant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 1987

These twelve stories are set in Paris, Mavis Gallant’s adopted home, a city whose nuances she brings to life through a wide range of characters: squabbling writers, bewildered parents, scheming art dealers, beleaguered tenants, and feckless drifters. An artist’s widow proves more than a match for Sandor Speck, who hopes to make a name for himself with her late husband’s paintings. Literary rivals Prism and Grippes, the protégés of a rich, misguided American patron, battle across the years. And in the Magdalena stories, a man is caught in the pull of loyalties between his beautiful first wife from a marriage of political conscience, and the woman he truly loves. Elegant, concise, finely textured, these stories never relax the tension between detachment and compassion, understanding and mystery, memory and truth. With remarkable intelligence and an unfailing eye for the telling detail, Gallant weaves stories of intricate simplicity and spare complexity.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gallant ( Home Truths, etc.) sets these adroit stories (11 previously appeared in the New Yorker, one in Harper's in Paris, her home since 1950, binding them with droll, sometimes poignant humor and an assemblage of characters who pop up repeatedly, along with their relatives, neighbors and colleagues. Least successful is the title story, a dense confection combining an aged, confused mother, her exasperated brood, a rambling apartment and a morose tenant in a flurry of shifting focuses. Far more enjoyable is a trio of stories involving a testy French novelist and British author, once proteges of a singularly misguided, rich American, who aim literary potshots at each other across the years. Gallant is a master at montage; the overlapping angles of lives on view here hint deliciously at the full picture, yet never sate by tediously filling in all the details.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The accomplished author of these stories, all but one of which appeared in The New Yorker, is a Canadian settled in Paris. Here she portrays cultivated, comfortable Parisians whose preoccupations and preconceptions keep others at a distance. The droll lead story, "Speck's Idea," is the most entertaining. In it an aging art gallery owner hopes to exhibit a neglected artist for whom the world is now readyif he can think of such an artist. The title story describes a lonely lodger who is never accepted as part of the family with whom he boards. In "The Assembly," a group of residents meet about building security but talk past one another about personal trivia. The Paris locale, the quirky Gallic mentalities, and the rich detail evoke a foreign atmosphere, and certain characters emerge in more than one story, as in a novel. Recommended. William A. Donovan, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394545117
• ISBN-13: 978-0394545110
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,214,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)