MONTREAL STORIES: The Fenton Child; The End of the World; New Year's Eve; The Do

This collection of short stories was selected by Russell Banks and printed in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Ltd. in 2004 under the title Montreal Stories and simultaneously in the United States by The New York Review of Books under the title Varieties of Exile. Thirteen of the fifteen stories first appeared in The New Yorker. The exceptions are "1933" which originally appeared as "Déclassé" in Mademoiselle and "The Fenton Child". “In Gallant’s stories, the conflicts, obsessions, and concerns – the near-impossibility of gaining personal freedom without inflicting harm on those whom you love and who love you; the difficulty of forgiving a cruel and selfish parent without sentimentalizing him; or the pain of failed renewal – are limned with an affectionate irony and generated by a sincere belief in their ultimate significance, significance not just for the characters who embody them, but for the author and, presumably, the reader as well.”
–Russell Banks, from his introduction

Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The complexity of the very idea of home is alive in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal. Montreal Stories, Russell Banks’s new selection from Gallant’s work demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer’s singular art. Among its contents are three previously unpublished stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir – stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

The Fenton child The end of the world New Year's Eve The doctor Voices lost in snow In youth is pleasure Between zero and one Varieties of exile 1933 The chosen husband From cloud to cloud Florida Let it pass In a war The concert party