On Monday night, the winner of the Giller Prize was announced. When I was a younger reader, I believed there was a perfect alchemical wonder which was suitably rewarded as a winner from a shortlist of contenders for a literary prize; when I grew up, I realized that there
This week, I'm just going to share a few random thoughts about this story. Not Paris. Not Italy. Madrid. (There are so many pretty pictures of Madrid. But this picture makes me think of the women in the story.) Pillar fears she is too old to remarry. She married
Another writer might have titled this story “Summer Games”. But in using a French title, Gallant’s English readers are immediately, if only for a brief moment, inhabiting an unfamiliar place. We have a hint of what’s to come. We are to expect something like the collection’s first story, “By
Along the way, I’ve missed only one of David Bezmozgis’ books. The last novel of his I read was The Free World and, reading through the quotations I saved from that reading, I was struck by how many older passages resonate with this new collection. Here is one which
He’s middle-aged and the father of a grown woman the same age: no wonder Stella thought Henry was a catch, a great romance. Really? A catch? Did Stella really think so? And, even if she did, at one time, once she met his daughter, Peggy, in person, did Stella
