Status Updates From The Cost of Living: Early a...

I only read four of the 20 stories here. They are stories of people who don’t know themselves in places unknown to them. Which makes it awkward for them and easy for Gallant to lord their unease and clumsy behavior over them. I grew to like the title story in the end, but after the first three stories, reading Gallant grew oppressive.

'It was something about Louise; she was so kind, so hospitable, she made one want to run away.'

'Going Ashore' en 'Thieves and Rascals' horen waarschijnlijk bij de beste korte verhalen die ik ooit gelezen heb

writing is amazing but it’s like with every story she was trying to invent new ways for humans to be unpleasant

Ok. Just read MG’s short piece ‘Going Ashore’ - Add - in Tangiers, Africa. A few hours of a slice of the life of a nice, but questionably home schooled twelve year old girl Emma, with a seemingly promiscuous mom who seemed to mysteriously, successfully live off men what with all the money she was throwing around; I mean a forty-five day cross-Atlantic cruise for two? Who can afford that?

Just finished reading ‘The Picnic’, a short story MG wrote in 1952. Having read through a few of her other collections of short fiction, I do get a sense of her not being as fully developed in her ‘mindset’ for writing as she’ll be later. Her writing skills per se, of course, were great already - it’s just her cultural perspectives or something that were a bit greenhorn in the early days.