Travelers, visitors, and expatriates, Gallant's characters have left homes that don't quite suit them. They find themselves in damp Italian villas or Moscow opera houses or Catalan circus arenas or Genevan hospitals, their loves or families on the verge of crumbling if not already lost. Most will survive, but in the moments the author chooses to describe them they are desperately blind to their errors of judgment or their quiet tragedies. Gallant, Canadian-born but a Parisian since 1950, is a master of short story form and style; her language avoids flourishes for real craft, and her wisdom is often astounding. These stories originally appeared in The New Yorker in the 1950s and 1960s.
Used availability for Mavis Gallant's Paris Notebooks