The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A collection of over thirty short stories by a great modern writer, now available in a single volume for the first time ever.
Mavis Gallant’s extraordinary mastery of the short story remains insufficiently recognized. She may be the best writer of stories since the early-1950s prime of John Cheever, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor, and even in such august company, her work is sui generis. Gallant’s short fiction refines the art of the story even as it expands the boundaries of what a story can be. Above and beyond that, however, it constitutes a striking, almost avant-garde reduction. To read her is to discover something about the very nature of story: how for better or worse life is caught up in it, and how on the page that common predicament can come to life.
The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant includes more than thirty stories never before gathered into one volume, including “The Accident” and “His Mother” and “An Autobiography” and “Dédé.” With the publication of this book, finally all of this modern master’s fiction will be in print.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This landmark collection features stories by Canadian writer Gallant (1922–2014) not included in her New Yorker–centric Collected Stories. In novelist Hallberg's artful introduction, he explains how encountering Gallant's work restored his faith in fiction, describes her exacting craft, and illuminates the "wound beneath the cool" that marks so many of her characters. The stories, which are mostly set in North America, southern Europe, or Paris, depict various kinds of alienation. In "The Old Place," a Canadian son follows his mother and concentration camp refugee stepfather on a trip to Europe, feeling distant from them and eager to return home. "The Accident" finds a Canadian woman losing her husband to a freak accident on their honeymoon in Italy. The longest entry, "Its Image in the Mirror," delves into the contradictory, sometimes hypocritical feelings a more conservative sibling holds for her estranged bohemian sister, providing a remarkable example of Gallant's masterful ability to leave the most significant aspect of a story subtly unsaid but painfully clear. It's an essential addition to any library of 20th-century short fiction.
