Mavis Gallant knew “fake news” when she saw it. “The picture is an obvious and mischievous fake, and it was with great reluctance that four reputable newspapers decided to run it.” In fewer than a thousand words, “Mousse” considers the status of a once-significant political leader whose position has
Not his daughter. Not Joyce. Charles Kimber didn’t think she had it in her. But the headmistress has written to say that sixteen-year-old Joyce vanished from St. Hilda’s School and spent the weekend in Albany in a hotel with a young man. A young man from a good family
My February reading lists tend to be longer than my January lists. Except for my Middlemarch February. Likely this will be true this year too, with the shorter reads in the wings. The shadow stack of graphic novels and poetry, some of Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna books: smaller
In “Madeline’s Birthday”, Madeline was sent to the Tracy family’s summer home: her divorced parents are elsewhere, living Madeline-free lives. “The Wedding Ring” tells a similar story, but from the daughter’s perspective: a first-person chronicle of the only child of a happily-divorced couple. The story begins quietly, as though
In “Madeline’s Birthday”, the sadness slips to the background, like it does in an Elizabeth Taylor story, with a hint of darkness besides. Madeline is a guest in the Tracy family’s summer home, and her seventeenth birthday affects every resident. Readers briefly inhabit the perspective of most inhabitants (even
