Faust, Gallant, Hawley, Madsen and Ross Short Stories in October, November and December "It was a long time - a long time watching him the way you watch a finger tightening slowly in the trigger of a gun – and then suddenly wrenching himself to action
At first it is surprising. To come across the word ‘defenestration’ in a Mavis Gallant story. Often these are inward-looking stories, detailed and expansive glimpses into the interior lives of quiet – and often solitary – characters. Someone drives too quickly or protests the contents of a sermon, someone
“Although an epidemic of haunting, widely reported, spread through the Fifteenth District of our city last summer, only three acceptable complaints were lodged with the police.” Having read about half of Mavis Gallant’s short stories now, and never yet having met a ghost, imagine my surprise at finding three
When readers meet Gabriel it is 1960 and he is twenty-five years old, fresh from having served in the French army for twenty months in Algeria. “War had never been declared. What Gabriel had engaged in was a long tactical exercise for which there was no compensation except experience.”
So many of Mavis Gallant’s characters inhabit between spaces. Netta, too. Which is strange, because so many of Mavis Gallant’s other itinerant women are staying in hotels, but Netta is running one. And she is just as between as the rest of them. Once she said yes and, then,
