A review by justliketitanium
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Michael Ondaatje

3.75

My aunt read this and loved it, so I figured I’d give it a try myself. I looked at a few of Gallant’s other collections, but decided to read this one as well, since it was curated by Michael Ondaatje (whose name I know well despite never having read any of his work—that's growing up listening to the CBC for you). Gallant was Canadian, and moved to Europe in 1950 to pursue a career writing fiction full-time. She settled in Paris where she stayed for the rest of her life, though she remained a Canadian citizen.

I have to admit I don’t usually go for short fiction, and it took me a while to get through it. I read the foreword, so my experience of the book started like a class reading, but once I got into the stories, I quickly recognized one of my favourite traits in an author: the ability to write characters who seem like whole, complex people no matter how briefly they appear on the page.

I was also impressed by Gallant’s dry humour, her use of details to render rich scenes, her use of asides to add depth to characters and relationships, her tendency to present a protagonist very matter-of-factly and allow the reader to draw the conclusion that they are a real piece of work, and her poignancy. She’s got to be an all-time great for poignancy.

Some of the post-WWII stories reminded me of All the Light We Cannot See, and made me itchy in a way that I think results from growing up in a world where Nazis being bad was a given and then having the the world change into a place where Nazis being bad is controversial. I also think there’s a bit of having lived through fascism being expressed in a nonchalant attitude towards it that hits much differently during a global rise in fascism. (A brief look at Gallant’s Wikipedia page suggests that her focus on fascism comes at least in part from her living in France during the 1970s and the post-WWII discourse about collaboration that was going on there at the time.)

My favourite stories were “The Moslem Wife,” “From the Fifteenth District,” and “August”, the last largely on the strength of the dinner scene where the point of view shifted so fluidly from character to character, with an honourable mention for “Mlle. Dias de Corta” for the novel framing and its ending. 

I’m so glad I ventured outside of my comfort zone to read this one!