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
Mavis Gallant's childhood was not entirely happy. She was not loved as she needed to be loved. It was a painful time. It is difficult to set that awareness aside in reading "The Rejection", even though the story makes it difficult to determine who has been rejected and who
Evidence of Mavis Gallant's wit is abound in this super short story. Tongue firmly wedged in cheek, readers marvel with the imagined writer of this short piece. A writer whose familiarity with French Crenellation is abundant. (Whereas the writer's observations left me doubting my own understanding of it, so I
