Started this a few years ago, enjoyed a few of the stories, some I just didn't like very much - good writing, great setting, ... decided finally not to finish the last few.

Crossposted at Booklikes

I almost didn’t buy this book.

But I’m glad I did.

I don’t think I have read Gallant before picking up this book, unless it was in college during the Canadian Literature course I took. But wow.



Paris Stories is somewhat of a misnomer as half the stories don’t take place in Paris. The overarching theme of these stories seems to be that what people see and what actually is – in terms of relationships, reality, or anything else. They are about creative beings.



Many of the stories are just so stunningly beautiful and can turn so suddenly.



In terms of style, Gallant seems to be the love child of Austen and Twain (if Twain had actually liked Austen).



The stories focus on families, for the most part. A couple with children, a grandmother, a honeymoon couple, a woman and her tenet who is more than a tenet.



It’s a good thing that the stories are so good that I have trouble deciding which one of them is my favorite. There is “Mlle Dias De Corta”, a story told in letter form. The narrator is one of those catty and endearing women. Then there is “The Moselm Wife” which really isn’t about a Moselm wife. It has the sentence, “He read steadily but cautiously now, as if every author had a design on him” (102).



The stories are like Chinese boxes and Russian dolls. Hidden parts, rich food, and great wine.



Perhaps it is “From the Fifteenth District” a story about haunting but not in the way you think. It is somewhat “Irina” about grandmother who is not what she appears to be.

This review is crap because I cannot write about how truly wonderful this collection is.

The fact that mediocrities like Sally Rooney and Maggie Nelson are trumpeted as paradigms of literature enacted by woman while Mavis Gallant lies mostly forgotten I take as represenative of the stupidity of the modern age.

This was a big disappointment.

The author's afterword says not to read these all at the same time, so I'm calling it quits for now. Feeling validated!

This book was listed at the back of Francine Prose's How to Read Like a Writer. Years ago I added the first page or two of suggested reading from Prose's list to my Amazon Wishlist. Last Christmas someone gave me Gallant's Paris Stories and I've only now read all the stories in the collection. I'm not certain I've read more beautiful, direct declaritive sentences. Gallant's prose is so clean it's perfect. Her ability to slip from one character's thoughts to another's, sometimes within the same sentence, is startling and refreshing and entertaining. These stories inspire the imagination; they make me want to write. Some are humorous, others tragic; all reach a level of care and coherency that make the act of reading them one of heightened senses, of an almost anxious pleasure which pleads for them not to end, for the sentences to keep living and breathing with each exact word, each shiny, perfect step forward. Read The Moslem Wife. Read them all, and then find copies of her many collections and read those too. That is my plan.

There were a few great stories, but I think I liked the idea of this book more than the book. I didn't finish it.