The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant by Mavis Gallant

One Book You've Been Meaning To Read

“The mystery of what a couple is, exactly, is almost the only true mystery left to us, and when we have come to the end of it there will be no more need for literature—or for love, for that matter.” –Mavis Gallant

Julian Barnes quotes Mavis Gallant in the half-chapter of his A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. This odd chapter-slash-essay, titled “Parenthesis,” is a sort of authorial aside, a sleepy nighttime discourse on the grand subject of love, completely out of place from the rest of the book. It does make some sense, though: how can you have a history of the world without mentioning love?

I have reread “Parenthesis” many times. It is one of the few literary essays I have read that speaks directly on the subject of love, and it is both thought-provoking and moving because the narrator offers as evidence his own love for his wife in addition to the more intellectual ramblings and literary quotations. The Mavis Gallant quote has been stuck in my consciousness for the ten or fifteen years since I first read the book, but until recently, I didn’t think to look for more of her writing.

When I finally tried to search for Gallant’s writings, I discovered that she is a Canadian writer, and that most of her work is now out of print in the US, despite having her short stories published in The New Yorker regularly. On Amazon, I read countless raving reviews of her stories. One reviewer wrote,

“Her writing is magical on so many levels that I'll only mention a couple of them: the consistency and the sublime richness of her prose - it's like really rich fudge, a phrase or two of one of the 15+ stories is often enough for one sitting; the hauntingly subtle rendering of European life; the authority and command of her voice - there is no doubt in my mind that Mavis Gallant was put on this earth to write fiction as her job, and she writes like she knows it.”

On Wikipedia, a critic is cited as saying, “Mavis Gallant's fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian.”

Wow—I had never even heard of her outside the Julian Barnes book. I decided to get my hands on some Mavis Gallant… but I didn’t want to buy from Amazon Canada and have it shipped, so I went to my bookcrossing friends and asked if anyone had some Mavis Gallant to trade. Sure enough, a very generous Canadian bookcrosser (screen name crazybooklady) traded me two Mavis Gallant books for two of my Frederic Crews books. A few weeks later, The End of the World and Other Stories and The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant arrived in my mailbox.

Here’s the embarrassing part: this was a year and a half ago. Both books are still sitting on my shelf, unread. I must get on this.

Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant by Mavis Gallant

tags: books book reviews Canadian writers short stories Julian Barnes Mavis Gallant