A Tribute to Mavis Gallant

Stephen Henighan is the author of a dozen books of fiction and criticism. In The Globe and Mail (February 21) he published a short essay about Mavis Gallant’s fiction. These are the last two paragraphs:

“…Her wit is more savage than the ironies of Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood because it is the reverse side of a tremendous vulnerability.

“Gallant knows how it feels to be alone and without help in a foreign culture; to be at the mercy of people and rules that you do not understand. Her emotional range is greater than that of her peers because she allows her protagonists to be naive and manipulated; to fail and survive. There are no feisty heroines in Mavis Gallant’s fiction; in their place, one finds people who are the point of convergence of multiple histories. The readers of our urban future will admire many writers from the past. But they will recognize themselves in the protagonists of Mavis Gallant.”

Note: The author of this blog knew Mavis Gallant in Montreal in 1945 when she worked for the Montreal Standard, and he for the CBC’s International Service. Even at the beginning of her career she was interested in transplanted Europeans. He well remembers her sharp tongue. Now he no longer has to be afraid that she might write a story about him.