Reading this story might change your reading life forever. That's what happened to Peter Orner, whose essay on Mavis Gallant's stories is mesmerizing: "The Way Vivid, Way Underappreciated Short Stories of Mavis Gallant", published in The Atlantic's "By Heart" series. "The first story I read is called 'The Ice Wagon
Agatha Christie said her work was "very original". Julian Symons declared that she "has few peers, and no superior in the art of bamboozlement". Soho Press Compilation, 2016 And Anthony Boucher said that Beast in View was "written with such complete realization of every character that the most
Of all the Mavis Gallant stories which I've read this year, this one I yearn to discuss. With many of the others, company would be nice, not only to see what other readers might unearth in the layers, but simply for the company because the characters' loneliness and sadness is
It begins in darkness. South side of the Luxembourg Gardens "Louise, my sister, talked to Sylvie Laval for the first time on the stairs of our hotel on a winter afternoon. At five o’clock the skylight over the stairway and the blank, black windows on each of the
Is it too much? Or, just enough. What am I to make of this final story in my Alice Munro reading project. (I read her last collection, Dear Life, in 2012.) While rereading Too Much Happiness, I was constantly aware of the references to being happy, to happiness, in the
