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
What aspect of any single day makes for a good story? A rainy day or otherwise? "Foreign papers exaggerate; Stefan’s mother sent him such anxious letters from Berlin! He would write tonight and tell her not to worry. Nothing was as serious as it seemed from the outside. Moreover, his
