As in "The Other Paris" and "The Cost of Living", a nineteen-year-old woman's dreams of romance in the city are feathering away in "Sunday Afternoon". Robert Capa Cafe de Flore 1962 "Veronica was a London girl. At first her dreams had been of Paris, but now they were
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
At nearly one hundred pages long, it's unsurprising that this is the most complex of Mavis Gallant's stories I've read this year. It's neither the length nor the breadth of the story which complicates it, but the intricate arrangement of details, as readers are gradually immersed in the narration of
Miss Horeham seems to have walked straight out of a Barbara Pym novel: an older woman with standards which are disappointed with some regularity. She has lived in this pension for long enough to see families come and go, long enough to recognise the rhythms of the seasons there, and
