If Forain was reading this story, the one which follows the story about him, in Mavis Gallant’s ninth collection, he would be so disappointed to hear that M. Wroblewski can’t find a thing to read in Paris. “There are no books worth reading—nothing but pornography and translated Western trash.”
Although it was a challenge to find Kyoto within these four walls (without access to the public library, still in lockdown), it was easy to find Paris for May’s Here and Elsewhere. And if my calendar image looks familiar, it’s because a photograph of the same scene has frequently
In the first week of Covid-19 lockdown, I pulled The Box Garden off the shelf, opened it to read: “That there are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our whole selves shaken with
Since I began this project of rereading through Mavis Gallant’s stories, in January 2017, I’ve had this story in the back of my mind, unable to place it. I should have suspected it would reside here, in my first Gallant collection. Instead, I had begun to wonder if it
This is the shortest in the cycle of Carette family stories, available to read online, with a short introduction by Lynne Tillman, on the Center for Fiction’s website. It’s one of their “model stories”—for good reason. It’s concise, yet still manages to highlight so many of Gallant’s trademarks: acute
