“August” picks up the thread from 1959’s “Travellers Must Be Content” (a story which was also collected in The Cost of Living/Going Ashore). Just as time has passed between publications, time has passed for Bonnie and her daughter, Flor, too. The stories read like bookends, all-of-a-piece, but occupying
When Robert’s mother observes Alda’s signature and recognizes the pride and secrecy in its long loops and closed As, I think about the handwriting course that Mme Brounet took in Dédé. But I also think of Mavis Gallant writing long-hand and the hours she spent studying her own cursive
If Forain was reading this story, the one which follows the story about him, in Mavis Gallant’s ninth collection, he would be so disappointed to hear that M. Wroblewski can’t find a thing to read in Paris. “There are no books worth reading—nothing but pornography and translated Western trash.”
Although it was a challenge to find Kyoto within these four walls (without access to the public library, still in lockdown), it was easy to find Paris for May’s Here and Elsewhere. And if my calendar image looks familiar, it’s because a photograph of the same scene has frequently
In the first week of Covid-19 lockdown, I pulled The Box Garden off the shelf, opened it to read: “That there are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our whole selves shaken with
