Rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1988)

2020-12-27T14:27:22-05:00

Rereading Cat’s Eye while rereading Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Margaret Atwood emphasized the parallels between the narrator’s and author’s childhoods. I was a teenager when I read Cat’s Eye for the first time; I would have had no idea that Elaine’s childhood of lakes and insects was Peggy’s childhood

Rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1988)2020-12-27T14:27:22-05:00

Mavis Gallant’s “The Sunday after Christmas” (1988)

2020-01-29T10:43:46-05:00

It seems to me that Mavis Gallant must have spent an inordinate amount of time on terraces. As places that seem associated with a view, this seems appropriate for a writer with a penchant for observation and acuity. But even while terraces seem related to looking outward – especially

Mavis Gallant’s “The Sunday after Christmas” (1988)2020-01-29T10:43:46-05:00

Mavis Gallant’s “Better Times”

2019-11-22T18:54:03-05:00

In the collection, In Transit, this story’s placement, next to “When We Were Nearly Young” is brilliant. Two experiences of impoverishment: with different settings, life stages, and stakes. But rather than focus on a series of single people, “Better Times” concentrates on a married couple: Susan and Guy. It's

Mavis Gallant’s “Better Times”2019-11-22T18:54:03-05:00

Mavis Gallant’s “When We Were Nearly Young”

2019-11-19T18:10:15-05:00

This week, I'm just going to share a few random thoughts about this story. Not Paris. Not Italy. Madrid. (There are so many pretty pictures of Madrid. But this picture makes me think of the women in the story.) Pillar fears she is too old to remarry. She married

Mavis Gallant’s “When We Were Nearly Young”2019-11-19T18:10:15-05:00

Mavis Gallant’s “By the Sea” (1988)

2019-10-23T15:35:51-04:00

“No one is either fully good or fully bad in a Gallant story; her characters are more interesting than that, Gallant is neither a moralist nor a polemicist,” explains Jane Urquhart in the introduction to the Penguin paperback edition of this 1988 collection of stories. In the opening story,

Mavis Gallant’s “By the Sea” (1988)2019-10-23T15:35:51-04:00
Go to Top