Book Review: "Paris Stories" by Mavis Gallant

I like cheap books, but I love free books. This book was a free one and so, I couldn't help myself. For a long while, I have been recommended Mavis Gallant by fellow readers. After stating that I often like to read description and atmosphere more than dialogue and conversation, many stated I should read Mavis Gallant because of the way she formed sentences and imagery. Having read this book of Paris Stories, with an introduction by the writer of The English Patient I can honestly say that all of them were correct. Mavis Gallant is a writer you all need in your lives. She just has such a way with words. I can't even describe it. You can simply get endlessly lost in them.

In the story The Other Paris, a young American woman named Carol arrives in Paris expecting glamour, romance, and transformation. She is expecting to get married, she's only 22 and she is at the prime of her life. Instead, she drifts through awkward social encounters and hollow relationships, gradually realising that her fantasy of Paris was a projection rather than a reality. The narrative exposes the loneliness beneath expatriate idealism and the ease with which self-deception fills emotional gaps. Carol and her beloved become more of a couple of convenience rather than those inhabiting the City of Love. And it decays in the process. Mavis Gallant's story of Paris being empty is similar to those written by Emile Zola, who sought to also expose the 'reality' of the City of Love. This story very much solidifies what kind of 'Paris' Gallant is going to inhabit for the anthology. It isn't coated in picturesque nothings, but instead it is a city with real people, many of which have some very real and serious issues emotionally.

A story I quite enjoyed was called Speck's Idea. I'll try not to give too much away. It is a story about Speck, a detached expatriate observer, prides himself on his irony and emotional distance from others. He critiques the moral failures of those around him while remaining closed off from intimacy or responsibility. It is deeply ironic but also explores this attitude of supremacy that usually populates people who observe others. It can really be seen to be a comment on our own time, especially where the internet is concerned. Apathy has become a display of intelligence, even though it could actually suggest the exact opposite. When we learn about the situation concerning the gallery, we can definitely see where Speck's true failings of character are. The symbolism of the Eiffel Tower is something both great and ironic, the language being both brilliant and deeply character-centric.

A story I thought was probably the best in the anthology was called The Four Seasons. This is about a woman who works as a domestic servant and observes the decline and fall of their marriage, ideals and the country around her. There's a ghost that haunts the estate, unable to escape and she learns the ghost died in the bedroom she now sleeps in. I would have definitely left at this point, but our domestic servant (Carmela) wants to know more. But the war has broken out and so, there are more urgent things to concentrate on as well - the ghost becomes more of a metaphor for entrapment rather than something of a horrific storyline.

Another story I enjoyed was called Baum, Gabriel, 1935-. Told in fragments, the story traces the life of a man shaped by war, displacement, and fractured identity. As he moves from being a 'survivor' to a soldier, to a bit-part actor - there's many questions from when we first meet him at 25-years-old in 1960. Mavis Gallant definitely uses a running theme of war and post-war imagery to show the changes in the ways in which people move between lives. The main character's thoughts and story is not a coherent and straight road, but instead a back and forth with the reader and himself. He wrestles with himself and thus, represents that perhaps those who have seen war never really reconcile their emotions and thoughts. Instead they live out these impossibilities of coherence. They want it to be clear and straight, but it never will be the same again.

There are many more stories in this book but I cannot help but think that these are the most important to read if you want to understand Mavis Gallant properly. Her views on war and politics, her character writing, her view of the city of Paris as somewhere that is actually real and finally, her meditations on love and marriage. It was quite a dense read, but it was well worth it.