All the questions that Linnet poses at the end of this story? I wonder about them straight away. “How do you stand if you stand upon Zero? What will the passage be like between Zero and One? And what will happen at One? Yes, what will happen?” Straight away, straight
What we know, from the beginning, is that Linnet Muir is alone. "My father died, then my grandmother; my mother was left, but we did not get on." She concedes her role in this situation. She was probably disagreeable. "I was probably disagreeable with anyone who felt entitled to give
Vera’s sister-in-law sends tins of aspirin in her care packages, always with one pill missing. Nobody knows why, and, at the heart of it, this is what this forty-page-long story is all about. Nah, I’m making a joke. Actually, stealing one. Because it’s Vera who thinks it’s amusing to lend
At first it is surprising. To come across the word ‘defenestration’ in a Mavis Gallant story. Often these are inward-looking stories, detailed and expansive glimpses into the interior lives of quiet – and often solitary – characters. Someone drives too quickly or protests the contents of a sermon, someone
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s The Blank Wall (1947) “It was a mystery story she had got out of the lending library for her father, and she was not fond of mystery stories. Nobody in them ever seems to feel sorry about murders, she had said.” How unfortunate that Lucia is
