How can I explain how pleased I was to find Henri Grippes in one of the final stories in the Paris collection? It’s not as though we’re friends, but I’ve been wondering how he’s been keeping. And now, with just a few of Mavis Gallant’s stories left to read
There is a line in Steven Price’s 2016 novel, By Gaslight, which seems to suit his new novel generally: “Everything is about the dead.” And another which seems even more appropriate: “The truth that is found in a story is a different kind of truth, but it is not
This story is about Henri Grippes (familiar for readers of this collection, from “A Painful Affair” and “A Flying Start”) and O. Poche, who works in the taxation office. But it’s also about novelist Henri Grippes and his imaginings of O. Poche, who will appear in countless fictions. This
“All raise hands, please, who remember Rosalia. (Camera on studio smiles.)” You remember Rosalia, right? We met her in “A Painful Affair”, this collection’s fourth story: the dedicated servant of Miss Mary Margaret Pugh. Miss Pugh’s artistic patronage is not-yet-transpired in “Larry” (Larry is her half-brother), it’s an already-transpired-fact
In any given moment, I could answer this a different way: what is my favourite Margaret Atwood? Both Second Words and The Door stand out for me, as early ventures into forms which I didn’t think I enjoyed reading (essays and poems). And when I was beginning to seriously
