Another writer might have titled this story “Summer Games”. But in using a French title, Gallant’s English readers are immediately, if only for a brief moment, inhabiting an unfamiliar place. We have a hint of what’s to come. We are to expect something like the collection’s first story, “By
There were “few openings for women in the nineties” and, so, Mary Wakefield is forced to consider work as a governess in the 1890s. She is fortunate, in fact, that Ernest Whiteoak is seeking a governess for his brother’s young son (nine years old) and daughter (seven years old). Their mother
There is less than a year between Jane and Ernestine Kennedy, young sisters who “resemble little Renoirs”. They live with their mother, Mrs. Kennedy, who is so preoccupied with caring for their father, that the girls have a minder, Frau Stengel (their sixth). Jane Wyman in “Das Herz Einer Mutti”
If it had only been made into a film, I'm convinced that Elizabeth Taylor's Palladian would enjoy the same public flourishes of devotion that Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm can claim. Both novels are so bookishly satirical that we bookish folks have to squint to see the satire. But where
