Mavis Gallant (1922–2014)

Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.

A showcase of literary pointillism creating densely detailed short stories, this deadpan-ly humorous collection captured the dizzying feelings of displacement and the self-delusion necessary for its exiled characters.

Favourite story: The Remission. Stream of consciousness is difficult enough as it show more is but to have a whole system of streams that intersect, flood, recede and expand, all bridged together by the quietly devastating overarching story about life slowly being bleached out in this paler version of colonial life, to this I say, all hail Gallant. show less

We get to know Shirley Perrigny, formerly Higgins, nee Norrington, through a nonlinear jumble of perspectives – her husband, her several in-laws, her assortment of friends and acquaintances, her landlord, her mother, Shirley herself, and a 3rd person narrator who weaves in and out among the characters and is sometimes in Shirley’s head, and sometimes not. All of this is the perfect way to get to know the utterly original Shirley, whose life didn't start out promising - in her first few show more months of existence her mother thought she was a tumor, and when she was born, she was named by the doctor because her parents couldn't think of a name.

Her soon-to-be ex-husband tells her “your life is like a house without doors” - a lovely way to say she has no boundaries. She knows this, but can’t seem to stop:

“All her private dialogues were furnished with scraps of prose recited out of context, like the disparate chairs carpets and lamps adrift in her apartment. She carried her notions of conversation into active life and felt as if she had been invited to act in a play without having been told the name of it. No one had ever mentioned who the author was or if the action was supposed to be sad or hilarious. She came on stage wondering whether the plot was gently falling apart or rushing onward toward a solution. Cues went unheeded and unrecognized, and she annoyed the other players by bringing in lines from any other piece she happened to recall.”

In addition to having a great main character, this book is frequently HILARIOUS, starting with the opening pages, where Shirley’s mother writes her a Polonius-like letter of advice, including such gems as “Don’t cry whilst writing letters. The person receiving it is apt to take it as a reproach. Undefined misery is no use to anyone. Be clear, or better still, be silent.”

Another favorite of mine, Shirley’s experience of being a Canadian in Paris:

“…she had been daunted by the wave of hostility that rose to greet the stranger in Paris. Nothing seemed to be considered rude or preposterous if it was said to someone like her. ‘We wanted to give you beans and jam for dinner to make you feel at home, but my wife refuses to do American cooking.”

And this description of Shirley’s hypochondriac mother-in-law:

“Yet the fact of eating alarmed her. Peristalsis was an enemy she had never mastered. Her intestines were of almost historical importance: soothed with bismuth, restored with charcoal, they were still as nothing to her stomach in which four-course meals remained for days, undigested, turning over and over like clothes forgotten in a tumble dryer.”

Update: I got so carried away with the wit, I may have made it sound like a flat-out comedy, but it isn't, there is much that is poignant, it just isn't milked for cheap emotion. For example, my first quote from her mother's letter, while funny, also shows the kinds of letters Shirley has been sending her mother, and the way her mother responds to her misery. Here's another quote from the novel: "Mrs. Norrington was an attentive listener; only Shirley had ever failed to catch her ear.” show less

I read most of these stories at some point, 90's? -- and could not recall reading a single one of them, even when I looked up what I might have written in one of my old notebooks. What I did write was very straightforward, almost clinical: about a family falling apart, about failed marriages, a person who can't manage money and that sort of thing. Then the other night the thought came to me that a Gallant story is recounted to you as if you are sitting in a corner of a cafe with someone you show more don't know very well and are not even sure you trust or even like while she (definitely a she) tells you the life story about this or that person at a nearby table--people you don't know and will forget about as soon as you leave. The stories seem formless but generally pause at a simple but skewering insight somewhere toward the end. In "August" the pause is to reflect upon how we visit on others the things done to us, by doing them again, or avoiding them or a story will circle back to a recurring image, such as the ice wagon coming down the street, in the eponymous story. The stories wander from one viewpoint to another and appear formless but are always moving toward either that pause or consist of a steady layering up one or two recurring images. Masterful stuff! The afterward, by Gallant herself, is also worth a read. **** show less

Scintillatingly stylish grownup stories about lives and relationships fragmented in the wake of World War II. There's something almost hyper about the way Gallant's narratives effloresce and claim new terrain — one minute our supposed POV character is overhearing a conversation, next minute that conversation is revealing a whole hidden world behind or adjacent to the main story. Plots are plotless, like life; the meaning is all in the experience. It's literary pointillism done in a playful show more and occasionally very moving way, but to be taken in small doses. I shudder to think what a whole novel of this would be like. show less