“‘Newborn, they’ve got these huge peckers,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘I mean, really developed.’” When it comes to writing about Mavis Gallant’s short stories, I often want to begin with their first sentences. Sometimes there is such a swell of emotion at the story’s end, a marvelling at how entire
In the late edition of the Sunday New York Times, on September 12, 1993 John McGahern describes "Forain" as “a story that is as close to perfection as possible”. What a compliment. He says that “Mrs. Gallant has always written well about the Parisian emigre world, but never better
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
If only Dr. Dominic Missierna could arrange for a weekly dinner with Charles Filandreux (from “Siegfried’s Memoirs” in Coming Ashore) and Henri Grippes (from “A Painful Affair” in Overhead in a Balloom). Every year weighs heavily on these men, even though the time seems to have passed too quickly
My Flannery wanderings began here, and I've been amazed by both how many readers have never heard of her and also how many books about her life and writing are in the public library. If I wanted to spend the year in her company, on the page, I
