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
“I saw Maggie about a year ago. She says she’s leaving everything to an arts foundation,” says Maggie’s half-brother, Larry. He’s talking to his father. Who was married, at one time, to Maggie’s mother. Larry’s father remains nameless, the Elder Pugh. Just as he “has no real age”
Imagine a ribbon. Pinch a loop of it between your index finger and thumb. The small piece you grasp is where the story begins and ends, while in between recounting “the year of shocks”. We meet the Clairvoie family when son Luc has failed his course of study. Spectacularly
We have to assume that Speck came first, with “Speck’s Idea” published in 1979. “Overhead in a Balloon” was published five years later (both stories in the pages of “The New Yorker”, where the majority of Mavis Gallant’s stories appeared before they were bound into collections). So we have
