Most lives are wasted. All are shortchanged. A few are tragic.I skipped over Montreal Stories by Mavis Gallant many times while searching the audiobook database from my library -- I was never in the mood and I had never heard of Gallant; why bother? What a pleasure it was, then, to listen to these short stories as though I were discovering a secret treasure; and what a shame to then learn that the author passed away this year at 91. More celebrated outside of Canada, Gallant had 114 stories published in The New Yorker (only exceeded by John Cheever) and yet still I had never heard of her -- had not even noted her passing.The short stories in this collection (known as Varieties of Exile outside of Canada) are in three groupings of related characters, and although each story is a complete world unto itself, it was often unsettling to finish one and then have that world shaken up by the new information or perspective revealed in the next. Told from the points of view of Anglo Montrealers, this collection explores the culture and customs that, while firmly situated in the mid-20th century, laid the groundwork for today's Montreal where the Anglos have become even less welcome (despite the long roots in the community demonstrated here). Listening to this collection was a good experience because voice and accent were often described and the narrators did a wonderful job of demonstrating them (what would I know about the posh lisping French of a convent boarding school?) I'd suspect most of the Rest of Canada thinks about the Quebec issue from time to time, and this collection -- wholly apart from being works of real literary genius in themselves -- is an intriguing perspective. I may have jumped on the Mavis Gallant bandwagon a little late, but I'm looking forward to continuing the journey.
Mavis Gallant is a master of the short-story. While Alice Munro explores the dark corners of small town, rural Canada, Gallant maps the urban experience of the displaced and solitary. In this collection she returned to war-time and post WWII-Montreal. It is a Montreal of rigid social class and mores. Her protagonists are outsiders, some are isolated by language, sex, place, family history or a combination of all three. Others, like Marie Carette, are insulated by these factors. She and her more worldly twin Berthe, never move far from the city blocks where they grew up. Much of this collection is semi-autobiographical. One of the recurring characters in this collection is Linnet Muir, an independent young woman trying to overcome a crippling childhood. It is a character Gallant said she strongly identified with. Gallant was born in Montreal to a American mother and British father, the only child of marriage that didn't last. Her father died when she was 10 and her mother had already moved on to another love interest. Gallant was sent to 17 schools in her youth, frequently she was the only anglophone in a sea of French-Catholic nuns.The Montreal Gallant describes exists only in bits of architecture today, but there are echos of the old animosities and resentments that fuel current language divisions. Montreal Stories goes some way in explaining this split personality- a city both cosmopolitan and exuberant and at the same time parochial and censorious.This is a collection worth re-reading.
What do You think about Montreal Stories (2007)?
The heat broke in Montreal overnight, so this is a day that maybe be liveable, sans air conditioning. Makes reading a lot easier, too. Nevertheless I read during the heat wave, and not just sitting on the stairs underneath the fan. Finished Mavis Gallant's excellent Montreal Stories (edited by Russell Banks whose introduction is interesting and who did a marvelous in choosing these stories from Gallant's many, many stories.) In the book discussion groups I lead, a question often asked is "Why does an author write short stories, and not novels?" It's one that I'm sure will come up when we discuss this collection. The stories concern clusters of characters, and one could argue that Gallant might have made a big, sprawling novel out of them. She chose, however, to explore various facets of her people's lives, without a real narrative thread. It's up to the reader to make the connections, and in so doing reflect more deeply on their lives and times. The experience is that much richer, since the reader becomes a real accomplice in the telling of the story. These stories also appear to have been written over at least a 20 year period, and it's possible that Gallant saw more and more in her characters as she lived with them. That's something to be thankful for too, as her writing grew more nuanced, her tone surer with the years.Definitely worth sitting down this evening. I'd recommend not reading more than two stories at a sitting, in order to give yourself time to reflect on the stories.
—Mary Soderstrom
From Between Zero and One: ...I remember a day of dark spring snowstorms, ourselves reflected on the black windows, the pools of warm light here and there, the green-shaded lamps, the dramatic hiss and gurgle of the radiators that always sounded like the background to some emotional outburst, the sudden slackening at the end of the afternoon when every molecule of oxygen in the room had turned into poison...Gallant is absolutely brilliant with her descriptions of environments and historical contexts. I loved all of these stories and missed Eastern Canada while I read them.
—Sarah
