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
Alice Munro's hired girls like to read too.In "Sunday Afternoon", Alva asks Mr. Gannett if she could borrow "King Lear" and, also, Stendhal's The Red and the Black. Mr. Gannett agrees to share his books with Alva, just as Mr. Montjoy gifts the young Alice with his copy of Seven Gothic Tales at the end of
As is fitting for the opening story of Mavis Gallant's second published collection, My Heart is Broken, many themes feel familiar. The question of what constitutes a "good" woman, particularly when she is not a wife. The dilemma of trying to live an interesting life while maintaining a sheen of
In which I discuss the skinny volumes which accompany me on my travels, while the heavier volumes (like Margaret Millar's omnibus of mysteries, like Elizabeth von Arnim's Christopher and Columbus) remain at home. Tiphanie Yanique's Wife appeared from Peepal Press in 2015, after a collection of stories and a novel:
