Paris Stories

by Mavis Gallant, Michael Ondaatje Narrated by Lorna Raver, Yuri Rasovsky

Overview

Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker for close to fifty years, and the undisputed master of the short story. Her peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequaled skill. This superb collection of fifteen of Gallant's stories, edited and with an introduction by bestselling author Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set all over Europe, all written in Paris where she has long lived.

Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

Besides an introduction by Michael Ondaatje, this book includes the following stories:

"The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street""Irina""The Latehomecomer""In Transit""The Moslem Wife""From the Fifteenth District""Speck's Idea""Baum, Gabriel, 1935-( )""The Remission""Grippes and Poches""Forain""August""Mlle. Dias de Corta""In Plain Sight""Scarves, Beads, Sandals"Afterword: About the Stories, by Mavis Gallant

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

She stands among the best writers of the century.”
–Canadian Forum

“Mavis Gallant’s finely honed prose captures the small details that illuminate a life.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Mavis Gallant writes some of the most superbly crafted and perceptive stories of our time.”
–Globe and Mail

“Ms. Gallant, who has dared to drift in a disorienting century, always trusting her own imaginative compass. Her fiction, never fooled into trying to keep up with history, will last a long time.”
–New York Times Book Review

APR/MAY 07 - AudioFile

Mavis Gallant's fiction is familiar to NEW YORKER readers, but she isn't as widely known in the U.S. as in her native Canada. Gallant, who is from Montreal, has lived in Paris for decades, and this collection of stories set largely in European cities is the first audio collection of her work. It likely won't do much to win new devotees, however. Co-narrator Lorna Raver is a decent match with Gallant's prose, but Yuri Rasovsky affects vague and inappropriate accents for several characters. And while Gallant's stories are filled with insights and wonderfully crafted sentences, they're also humorless and occasionally stuffy, which is why they're more suited to a half-hour with THE NEW YORKER than an audio production. D.B. 2007 Audies Award Finalist © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169665505
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

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