“‘Newborn, they’ve got these huge peckers,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘I mean, really developed.’” When it comes to writing about Mavis Gallant’s short stories, I often want to begin with their first sentences. Sometimes there is such a swell of emotion at the story’s end, a marvelling at how entire
It’s easy to allow one’s world to get smaller, when one is overwhelmed by some of the sadness and struggle in this world; the opposite is also true, that it’s easy to expand your world under the same set of circumstances. A random spark, like this desk calendar by
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
In Iris Murdoch’s Henry and Cato (1976), Henry Marshalson inherits the family estate when his brother Sandy dies. Henry returns to the home where his mother Gerda still lives, with her kinda-sycophantic admirer, Lucius. Cato lives nearby. So does Colette. Stephanie does not, but, because of her pre-existing
In which there is talk of the slim stories which have travelled with me within the city. While bulkier volumes stayed home. Like Robertson Davies' Murther and Walking Spirits (1991). And Nazanine Hozar's Aria (2019). These are awkward travelling companions: thick and heavy But some of the skinnies in
