"A girl was never ruined by books," my mother used to say. I've spent most of my life trying to prove that wrong.

Friday, August 21, 2015

End of Summer Reading: Stories

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 to read. I'd recommend not reading more than two stories at a sitting, in order to give yourself time to reflect on the stories

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