Across the Bridge

by Mavis Gallant

A vintage collection of elegant, concise short stories, most of them set in Paris, displays the talent of one of the world's best short-story writers. Reprint.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Canada, Literary Fiction, Canadian Literature, France

198 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

Canadian journalist and fiction writer. In her twenties, Gallant worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard. She left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing. To that end, always needing autonomy and privacy, she moved to France.

In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature. That same year she also received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada as the University of Toronto's writer-in-residence. In 1991 Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. In 1993 she was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her. In 2004, Gallant was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship.

With Alice Munro, Gallant was one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appeared in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories had debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.

Although she maintained her Canadian citizenship, Gallant continued to live in Paris, France since the 1950s.

On November 8, 2006, Mavis Gallant received the Prix Athanase-David from the government of her native province of Quebec. She was the first author writing in English to receive this award in its 38 years of existence.

Reviews

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something very elusive and magical about Mavis Gallant's style. It seems to me that Gallant perfected the use of free indirect discourse in discussing familial groups, a narrative style that links her to other (mostly women) writers all the way back to Jane Austen. Gallant moves in and out of characters' points of view with effortless ease, like a drone that can situate itself anywhere in a scene including the inner souls of the characters, and while doing so, she also mysteriously establishes a group awareness among the characters, of shared thoughts and values...while at the same time also allowing for an ironic exchange between herself and her reader to take place. It's remarkable. Each story is more like a journey around an old house than it is like reading, and you're constantly surprised by what is around the corner. Nowhere is her mastery more apparent imo than in the story "Dede," collected here, where all kinds of random facts and events are built up slowly into a fictional truth where nothing is said and yet everything is revealed.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Fenton Child” is the stand-out here, and the rest are ok but not among Mavis Gallant’s better stories. She is not one of the few writers to get better with age, but every now and then she can write something as good as her early and (especially) her mid-career work. Unsurprisingly, though the bridge of the title story is the Pont de la Concorde, the American hardcover uses the Pont de Notre Dame while the Carroll & Graf paperback has the Pont des Invalides. One can only imagine that cover meeting: “What? This is Paris? What’s this river doing here? Where’s the Eiffel Tower? How about we get that Cartier-Brassaï guy?”

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read end of the world slowly, a story every few days and it was good: esp. that title story but in Across the Bridge, it became clear to me- she is a master. I’m in awe of her work and will now read and re-read it all.

Worth it if only for Forain, one of the finest stories I've ever read.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I much prefered the first half, including the title story.

That said, Gallant is a wonderful writer

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of her strongest collections, and markedly warmer, with a less detached and cynical tone than some of her other work. This is immediately evident in the opening series of four connected stories (grouped under the title ‘The Carette Sisters’ in the later collection Selected Stories). This fragmentary mininovella offers a strong statement about male weakness (a frequent motif in Gallant’s fiction) and female strength and solidarity, and I wonder whether these stories about a pair of sisters only slightly older than Gallant herself might be partly based on people she knew. In her avowedly autobiographical Linnet Muir stories (collected both in Home Truths and Selected Stories), the protagonist has a French-Canadian nurse called Olivia Carette, who seems to be something of a surrogate mother for the young girl that is Gallant’s alter ego. In the four opening stories of this collection, the Christian name of the Carette sisters’ mother is never mentioned, but it plausible to assume it is the same character.

And if she and her daughters are based on people Gallant knew well and had a warm relationship with (more so, it would seem, than with her own parents), that could account for the mellower tone of these stories, in which the sisters’ lower class milieu and their varying setbacks and life choices are set down without the caustic detachment or even slight mockery that characterizes much of her other work. This becomes especially clear if one compares the second of these stories with the admittedly very funny but much more acerbic early story ‘The deceptions of Marie-Blanche’ (from The Other Paris). In that earlier story, a farcical courtship somewhat similar to the one described in these stories is played out in a much more grotesque way. In this later account, the stress is not on the limitations of the catholic women’s lower class outlook so much as on the conscious choices they make (and the fun is mainly at the expense of the pitiful the suitor, who is dependent on the marriage to save him from military service in the Korean War!).

The Carette series closes off with a, for Gallant’s standards, almost sentimental image: one the sisters hugging her pregnant daughter-in-law after the latter’s no-good husband has left the room in an angry sulk. Almost sentimental, because Gallant’s sharp eye for wry details and aversion of common pieties prevent these stories from getting too soppy. Nevertheless, I think the entire collection is markedly less satiric than some of her earlier collections (especially the very funny Overhead in a Balloon). There is more surface reconciliation, more of an attempt at quiet resignation, at finding some measure of satisfaction within the limits imposed by reality, than in many of her other collections. And nowhere more movingly so, in my opinion, than in the terrific ‘A State of Affairs’, about an aging Polish emigré taking care of his wife, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book that I have read by this author. She was recommended by a fellow reader, who knew of my fondness for short stories. I read this volume over the course of an afternoon. The first four stories - 1933, The Chosen Husband, From Cloud to Cloud, and Florida - focus on the Carette sisters, their mother, and the younger sister's son.

Gallant's writing is excellent, even beautiful, and she has a gift for characterization, especially in female characters. However, there is always the feeling of distance, of emotional remoteness. I'm reminded of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, another book with lovely writing, but cold with no real emotion or soul.

The only character in any of the stories that I sort of like is Berthe Carette. She is smart, independent, and sensible. She is also saddled with a younger sister, Marie, who is completely incapable of taking care of herself, even in late middle age. More than once, it is commented that Berthe is having to take a man's role - as breadwinner for the family, as the head of the family. Berthe looks after her mother and sister. I seriously doubt that changes even after Marie's marriage. Despite this, Berthe comes across as content with her life. She's certainly better off than Marie, who is utterly helpless and has a dreadful son.

I would have liked more stories about the Carette sisters (without Raymond, please). However, the remaining stories have nothing to do with them and are a big of a mixed bag. I found "Across the Bridge" overly long. A young woman is engaged to a man she does not love. Instead, she wants someone else, who apparently doesn't want her. It was rather tedious. "The Fenton Child" was intriguing, but confusing.

I still have Overhead in a Balloon: Twelve Stories of Paris, but I think I'll wait to read it.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may have read a story or two by this writer in the past. I certainly have heard many references to her. Her work was featured in one of TNY Decade collections, not to be unexpected for a writer of over one hundred stories published in the magazine.

Gallant is not a writer for everybody. Her language and style is, while not difficult, is also not warm and embraceable. She writes a bit like that Aunt you have that is different than the rest of the family. Nice, but aloof. For me, however, I found her style to be just this side of perfect. Her skill with language, a style almost always understated, rings always true and perfect to the story told.

In this collection we spend, as with most of her stories a great deal of time in Montreal and Paris. This was the landscape she preferred.

The collection begins with " 1933 " in which we meet Berthe and Marie. Tow young sisters living with their Mother in an apartment in Montreal. Their Mother is a proper woman, close to her faith who says things like " An Irish husband is not to be desired, but is acceptable. After all, God sent the Irish to Montreal so they ( the Catholics ) would not marry Protestants. They live in a building with their landlord, the wife of whom the Mother is friends with. This leaves the landlord the only man in a house of women.

" The Chosen Husband " revisits Berthe and Marie. The are now young women, still living at home. Berthe has a good job and is the breadwinner of the family. What had been hinted at in the earlier story is now clear, Marie is not completely functional as an adult. Kind hearted but disposed to being tactless she cannot work at a job. She is naive in the extreme. So, when her Uncle Louis encourages a man named Louis by to court her Berthe is worried and not a little unhappy. We watch the courtship unfold. Proud women, not disposed to groveling, Berthe and her Mother also worry about Marie's future. After becoming engaged Louis gets cold feet, this ends up being solved by the Korean War. Whatever his feelings for Marie are or are not, his feelings about being drafted are more, so he rapidly changes course and they hurry to the courthouse to finalize the ceremony. Later, back at the apartment, helping Marie pack for her honeymoon, she feels sad for the feeling of bargaining her sister away. She composes herself however, acknowledging that she and her
sister are " just Montreal girls ", they cannot wait for or expect a perfect man.

In " From Cloud to Cloud " we now come across the sisters a coupe of decades later. Marie's husband Louis has just died. He was a good man in his own way, had been a good provider, and the had raised a son together. This story is about that son, named Raymond. Raymond was just eighteen when his father died, it was the late sixties, and despite being in Montreal, he was as affected by American youth culture as he would be if her were a couple hundred miles south. Wearing, what Berthe called, his cowboy clothes with his long hair, she acknowledged that he had been respectful of his Father before he died. Listening to his pronouncements and pontificating, advice for the life he would not share with him moving forward. Louis has family in New Brunswick and we are told that when Marie will not have a reception after the funeral that they are returning home " with the beginnings of a break that will not heal. " Marie is still, in her way, childlike and stubborn. Resolved immediately to moving in with her older, more worldly, sister the women are shocked when the morning after the funeral they wake to find Raymond gone. Marie's car is gone, her purse ransacked. When they go the family home they find his Father's watch gone, his birth certificate. He joins the American military. He ends up serving seven years, reenlisting once. Later he makes his way, albeit unsuccessfully in the motel industry in Florida. He never returns home, Berthe remembering his departure will not have him in her house. To protect Marie they both tell her different reasons, the apartment is too small, he is too busy. Berthe, childless herself, contemplates, wondering do sons know the pain they cause their mothers.

In the last of the Berthe and Marie stories ( at least in this collection ) we read " Florida ". We follow Marie in a Christmas visit to Raymond. This is her eighth Christmas visit. It seems each year she finds him in a new hotel, often in a new relationship. Raymond struggles. Berthe notes to herself that Marie still expects husband service from her, pickup, dropoff, ticket procuring. She does not mind, it is something she can easily do. When Marie arrives if Florida this time she meets Rays new wife. In the car Marie at first seems combative toward the girl but later at the apartment she speaks sharply to Ray when he is rude to his Father's memory and then also to his new wife. When Ray departs in a huff, Marie ( thinking back to the many times Berthe has consoled and steadied her ) tells the girl that she does not need Ray, that no matter what happens the girl and her baby ( for Marie has surmised that she is pregnant ) will always have Marie and Berthe to look out for her. One senses Marie feels whole offering this assurance in replacement of her " very bad boy."

We leave the sisters and in the next story, titled " Dede " we meet Pascal. A young boy in Paris we see his family life through his eyes. His Father, an important city magistrate, his Mother and her younger brother Dede. He loves his Uncle. His Uncle, however, seems to have problems. He is living with them because his Mother can no longer handle him. There was a fire in his bedroom. Pascal's Mother adores her little brother while his Father views him as a problem to deal with. The story focuses on a dinner party with two other couples. It had been arranged to try to arrange a meeting between Dede and a young woman. She could not attend but the party went on. It becomes apparent in the telling that Dede has real social issues. After the party we learn that the very morning of the party an incident had occurred involving Dede and fire here at the apartment in Paris. That evening when Pascal states he has earned his certificate or degree in the coursework he is following both Pascal's Father and Mother celebrate with him. She because she is so pleased at how fast he completed the work, he because he knows he is lying and does not care, he wants him gone. Later, grown up Pascal tells us that his Uncle was sent home to his Mothers house and later, even after he gained a job as a telephone survey taker he never came back to their apartments in Paris.

" Kingdom Come " visits a professor of special languages who has spent his career in the small country of Salternek. He has recently returned to Europe, to Helsinki. The country's ruling government has removed him from his position and the country. He feels like he has had his child taken from him. He had sacrificed his relationship with his own children for the children of his adopted country. They, themselves, had abandoned him, ridiculed him, wanted more than he thought they needed. He feels his life a ruin.

The title story, " Across the Bridge " is a lovely, longish work. It begins with a young woman and her Mother crossing a bridge in the city as they are walking to mail her wedding invitations. She tells her husband of her foreboding, her feelings of not love. Her Mother surprises her by not upbraiding her but by flinging the enveloped invitations into the breeze to float down on the river. We watch her family invite her fiancé to dinner to tell him the news, which he can scarcely believe. Armand is not a bad young man, he is a bit boring but he has a solid future, his family is respectable. Yet, soon we learn there is another man, a Swiss boy she had met in a public garden and then exchanged correspondence with. Once assured that she had not acted in an untoward way with this young man Brunelle her Father makes inquiries. After his second letter a response arrives from the Father making clear that his son had no intentions of marriage or serious interest in the girl beyond a flirtatious correspondence. Simply put the young woman had read into or misread the words and intent and now lost everything. Eventually after taking a holiday she returns and reaches out to Armand. With no helpers this time she meets with him, they talk, she admires his forthrightness, and as the story ends she is walking home in the rain thankful for the future she had, having gone away, now being in her grasp again, only this time appreciated.

Forain is an uneven piece about the title character, a writer who has made a career of translating well regarded but obscure European authors into French. His story is also the story of his client, a Polish man named Adam Tremski. Tremski had introduced Forain to his wife, a pretty woman named Barbara. A no nonsense negotiator, she wanted her husbands interests protected. Theirs was an odd relationship. She had left her husband for him, something her daughter never forgives her for. In the time of the telling Forain has gone to the funeral of Barbara and then, shortly after, to Tremski's himself. An odd story, one whose meaning I miss

" A State of Affairs " is a typical story from Gallant. We meet a Polish octogenarian named M. Wroblewski. He has a dear friend in Warsaw with whom he corresponds. They shared much of the horrors together. Not much occurs here, we just follow this man through his days. Dealing with his dementia effected wife. Having to deal with a citizenship issue as his refugee passports which he and his wife held for decades after the war must be converted to Polish ones now that it is now considers a " free " country. Gallants writing is more meaningful at times in structure than meaning.

Mlle Diaz de Corta : Very interesting story told in the form of a letter from an older Parisan woman to a younger woman who had once let a room in her home. In the letter we come to know how Ms. De Corta ended up renting from them, the particulars of her rental agreement and her hope to become an actress. What brings about the letter was the woman's seeing the night before an oven cleaner commercial that brings back to vivid memories of her tenant. We read that she and Robert ( her landlords son) had a relationship and in fact she had been pregnant with his child on the day she last saw her. He had taken her for an abortion and then left her in a diner and would never speak to his Mother about what happened. At this time, at least twenty and perhaps more, the landlady is offering her tenant her place back. She works out the unpaid rent and the interest owed on it but one senses the money is not the need, it is companionship, the hope she will come to claim her left behind suitcase and stay.

In the final story, the longish " The Fenton Child " we meet Nora an eighteen year old Montreal girl who lives with her parents. And loves them and they her. No disfunction. Her Father has her help out a family that are in the process of adopting a baby from an orphanage. It is an interesting look at Montreal directly after the war, the power of the church, the family. Nora's Father is English, but has adapted, converted to Catholicism in fact, to marry into the family. As Nora helps the gentleman Fenton bring the baby home she stumbles into an arrangement. The man wants to believe, or wants Nora to believe, that the child is his and his wife's, it had been at the orphanage for six weeks on,y to allow his wife to recover. His wife never appears, something is going in with the maid, she is advised. ( after questioning the baby's parentage ) that her services will not be needed. Later her Father, who in his position with the city has made it a practice to unite unwanted children with families, tells her as she questions him about what he knows, that if she wants children to have the. Herself and to forget this one, the Fenton child.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gasp! Beautiful and strange and haunting and sad. She’s a master.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes you want to visit Paris in the 1940s, though I'd settle for Paris in 2008. Also makes me glad I'm not a Catholic woman in 1940s Montreal. Beautifully evocative prose - "Mlle. Dias de la Corta" is particularly masterful.

[sosser · Rating 5 out of 5]

her elegant writing puts me into a happy trance, broken only by my own laughter at her sharp wit. every word is a pleasure to read.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Across the Bridge is called a “vintage collection” of eleven stories, as they are set in the 1930s and 40s in Montreal, or the 1950s in Paris, where Gallant spent her youth and the early years of her career. The first four stories are connected, and follow the fortunes of the Carrette family in Montreal. As a widow, Madame Carrette supported her family as a seamstress, but told her grown daughters not to say seamstress, only that mother was “clever with her hands.” As the older daughter Berthe was clever in business, she then supported the family, but younger sister Marie had no skills, so she would have to marry. She did have an admirer, but she was told to forget about him. “In the life of a penniless unmarried young woman, there was no room for a man merely in love. He ought to have presented himself as something: Marie’s future.” A suitable prospect was found for her, and approved, and when war was declared, they married right away.

Similarly, the last story in the book, “The Fenton Child” takes place in Montreal, and involves an unmarried young woman. Her father has obliged 17-year-old Nora to do a favor for his friend, Mr. Fenton. She is to go with him and a doctor to collect Mr. Fenton’s 3 month-old baby boy from the orphanage, take him home, and help look after the infant, just for a few hours. Thus she stands “in a long room filled with cots and undesired infants,” reflecting that she “still did not know whether she liked children or saw them as part of a Catholic woman’s fate.” Nora had been told that Mrs. Fenton had had a nervous breakdown, and “it’s a Christian act” to help them, but the way Mr. Fenton and Dr. Marchand talk in front of her is disrespectful and crude. First Fenton is overly friendly to her, then he laughs at her for assuming Mrs. Fenton is the infant’s mother. Realizing that someone else bore the infant brings to Nora’s mind the months her cousin was out of town that year. She mentions her cousin, saying, “I just mean that it fits.” Fenton answers her with: “A hundred women in Montreal would fit, when it comes to that.”

There are six Paris stories. The title story, “Across the Bridge” is about another unmarried young woman. Her parents have arranged a marriage for her, but she thinks she has fallen in love with another man. Figuratively speaking, of course, we could say every story includes a bridge to be crossed, and each one does indeed capture moments when people’s illusions are revealed and their lives are changed, but I shall describe just one: My favorite in this collection is about a couple at the other end of life. “A State of Affairs” is about an elderly couple, the Wroblewskis who have lived in Paris since they arrived as Polish refugees after World War I. At the end of that war so many governments and borders were in question that they and thousands of others were given international identity documents called Nansen passports. With M. Wroblewski, we recall his and his wife’s teaching careers, their Paris neighborhood, their home for so many decades, their retirement, and how, since his beloved wife Magda has had dementia, the city has been sending a health aide to help her five mornings a week. Now, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs notifies him that the Nansen Passports are being called in. They and a few other eighty-something Polish-born Parisians he knows are suddenly stateless! Only when he has submitted an application for French citizenship and received the usual bureaucratic response—no reply—is the matter settled in his mind.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of 11 stories from Gallant’s prolific short story output. The stories are set in francophone Montreal and Paris (but not, like most anglo-expats-in-Paris, writing about themselves, but about actual French people or Eastern European immigrants).

The prose is really chiseled, and Gallant has this way of delivering searing little lines that upturn expectations or overturn worlds. And she keeps you constantly on this very tense line between comic absurdity and sadness. The style runs bad only in one story, Forain, where it seemed that each sentence was chopped down to the same monotonous rhythm. But mostly it’s really, really excellent writing.

The best stories are those with young women as main characters, like an initial cycle set in Montreal, or the brilliant title story, that starts on a bridge overlooking the Seine. Gallant inhabits the thoughts of women whose lives are circumscribed by men ― fathers, mostly, but also potential partners. Most of these are pre-68 young women, who dream of bourgeois self-fulfillment: marriage, children, a good husband. But males also represent a world of danger that exists just on the periphery, like in the last story, The Fenton Child, a sort of mystery featuring a young woman, her infant charge, and a vile net of good old boy complicity that ensnares young girls and forces silence on the wives. While they’re not all so fraught with danger, the stories show girls and women trying to navigate through a series of limited future choices. It’s refreshing ― if painful ― to not get a “fuck it all, let’s run off and follow our bliss” type of Hollywood moralizing. These young women, for good or for ill, are part of a fabric of family and religion and language community and there are consequences for trying to break free ― even, as in the title story, when the mother actually tries to help one to do it. There is one character earlier on who’s the most-recognizably modern: intelligent, fierce, independent, unapologetic. I liked her at the time, but in retrospect I found her less interesting than the other fascinating studies of women caught up in webs of convention.

Really really recommended.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, Mavis Gallant, had an interesting writing quirk in that she wrote about French Canadians and lived in Paris for much of her life. She was fully fluent in French/ English but said her fiction came to her in English. These are a group of interconnected stories. There was a sense of loss and longing through the book. Most of the important characters were women who did not seem to have agency in their lives The stories are spare but engaging. The initial ones were set in Montreal among French speaking families. The interactions with the English (speakers) show confusion in that they did not get each other at all. The descriptions of old Montreal were charming. I would enjoy reading some of the author's other work but this is the only one my library has.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slightly strange tender stories

I’ll remember these stories but I may never understand them. They are elegiac, enigmatic: they start and then they stop abruptly without resolving what just happened. I love the deliberately uncertain truth about the the characters, what they do and why they do it. Maybe I’ll understand more when I reread them.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mavis Gallant is such a treasure. Her stories are modest but powerful. I've read another short story collection by her, the Paris Stories, which I found a bit more memorable, but they are all elegantly written. I especially loved the stories set in Montreal in this collection.

[Roberto Iacobacci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written stories that pull you into the setting. I particularly enjoyed the stories set in post-war Montreal. They gave a great sense of the family and religious tensions at play during that historic period. I gave the book 3 stars but it's more of a 3.5.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first few stories are great but it does drag and get a bit samey toward the end

[Name]

It is good for me

[Paul Wangari]

Want to Read

[Elizabeth Strauch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few duds for me (mostly for lack of understanding the context), but favorites were A State of Affairs, Across the Bridge, Mlle. Dias de Corta, and The Fenton Child.

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A smart, incisive collection that has stood the test of time. Such an interesting look at bilingual/bicultural life in Montreal and Paris.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of short stories about people. Amazing how the characters and story can be so well developed. I will read the Montreal stories collection.

[Katherine Mazzanti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just the short story “Dédé”

[Shayzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

DayDay, the New Yorker fiction podcast

[Aňa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mavis Gallant's writing is some next-level sh*t.

[Rossella DB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quattro racconti che non lasciano indifferenti né per lo stile, né per i temi e climi umani affrontati.
La scrittura è graffiante nella sua essenzialità e ponderatezza.
I primi racconti sembrano focalizzati sulle donne, i secondi due hanno un respiro più ampio. Tutti e quattro però lasciano qualcosa su cui pensare.
Decisamente un tipo di lettura, che lo stile attualmente in voga, aveva fatto dimenticare.
Si viene trasportati nei luoghi dei racconti con calma. I guizzi ironici non diventano mai banali e sembrano fare ironia dell'ironia.
Eccelsa Mavis Gallant.

[Arafat · Rating 5 out of 5]

the book is marvelous.
I love it

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel a bit ungenerous at three stars, as some stories are real knockouts. Three and a half stars would work better.

The whole is marred by a few pieces that, to me, are ponderous and unduly knotty, but even these stories are repositories of intelligence, insight, and surreptitious wit, with just one dud ("Kingdom Come"). It felt surprising to find a broad range of tone, subject, and era, which, though impressive, makes it hard to come away with a unified feeling about the collection. I'm definitely motivated to read more of Gallant, in hopes of finding a more integrated set of stories; and there are always the novels.

[Candy Greenway · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories started off rather slow for me. While the writing was good, I wasn't sure why the author had taken the time to write about such mundane people and situations. After the 3rd story, however, I began to realize what a great talent Ms. Gallant really is.

This collection is, by no means, the greatest one I've come across. Two that I prefer are "You Are No Stranger Here" and "Strange Business". The first one is not for the faint of heart, to be sure!

[maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection appealed to me because I've always enjoyed Mavis Gallant's Montreal stories. About half the stories are set in Montreal, and half in her usual Paris. My two favorite stories were "Across the Bridge" and "The Fenton Child," both of them deft evocations of situations that are not immediately apparent.