There's something very appealing about the foreigner abroad. It makes me think the characters in "Lost in Translation", vulnerable and lonely in a strange world. Like that film, this collection of stories is more about the characters themselves than how they experience their environment.The 19 stories in this collection all deal with protagonists who are away from home. Apart from their own culture and language, not quite living in the real world, these people are perpetually in transit.
Gallant's prose is simple and elegant and peppered with startling and astute observations.
"'Digby is slightly restless, and marriage would settle him,' said Mrs Glover, pitying Digby, who now joined the company of men whose fate had been settled by a pair of women over empty cups." (from "A Question of Disposal")
"Every day had to be filled as never at home. A gap of two hours in a strange town, in transit, was like being shut up in a stalled lift with nothing to read." (from "In Transit")
"He had the soul of a carpet." (from "Good Deed")
Gallant is one of Canada's most treasured writers, but people would be hard pressed to recall her work. Her short stories are highly anthologized and she's often read in the course of English-Canadian literature studies and then forgotten. Gallant deserves much more.
