is a marvellous story about a German boy who comes home late from the war; there is an extraordinary account of a Polish exile in Paris, and another of a Hungarian mother whose son lives in Scotland. And the last story, ‘Irina’, has a deeply unsettling version of an old woman (‘In loving and unloving families alike, the same problem arises after a death: What to do about the widow?’). In this volume, Gallant writes with wit and intelligence and a unique sort of sharpness.
Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal and has lived in Paris since 1950. Her Collected Stories came out in 1996.
Age in year of publication: fifty-seven.
Helen Garner 1942–
1984 The Children’s Bach
The late twentieth century is Helen Garner’s stamping ground. Her novels, short stories and brilliant journalism are marked by an incisive intelligence and an exact command of language. Her writing is spare and sharp, like a sequence of photographs of sour city streets, her characters snatched in celluloid for just one second. In a line or two she captures intimately the habits of the young in the city, and the disorders of adult love. She is at her best in this mordant tale of urban family life in which her wit and singular dialogue are imbedded in an elegant threnody of Bach, Mozart, and a tangy mix of rock and soul.
Athena is married to Dexter, a man who wants to ‘live gloriously’ and who wears shirts that look like pyjama tops. They have two children, Arthur, and Billy, who is not quite right in the head and about whom Athena, at least, nurses no delusions. Elizabeth erupts from Dexter’s past, bringing with her Philip, the cool rock musician, and her younger sister Vicki. Matters and persons rearrange themselves, to the accompaniment of Philip’s rock rhythms, Dexter’s curly whistling and Vicki’s cacophony of vomiting after too much Campari and orange. But really this is the story of Athena’s search for her own music, for more than the city sounds, the burble of children and the distant chatter of neighbours. Through it all, Helen Garner’s offbeat humour adds wonderfully and contrapuntally to this story of the encounters, adjustments and confrontations of ordinary life.
Helen Garner was born in Geelong and lives in Melbourne. Her award-winning fiction includes Monkey Grip (1977), Honour & Other People’s Children (1980), Cosmo Cosmolino (1992), The Spare Room (2008) and short stories, Postcards from Surfers (1985). Her classic reportage on political correctness in action, The First Stone, was published in 1995.
Age in year of publication: forty-two.
William H. Gass 1924–
1968 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
(revised edition 1981)
The five stories in this book have different themes and settings, but there is something distinctive about the tone and the voice; Gass’s signature in these stories sets them apart. The style is poetic and at times gnarled. The sentences are worked on and sculpted. Gass is clearly as interested in language as he is in things; he gives the impression that the words he uses were cut out of stone. Yet he manages in the first long story, ‘The Pedersen Kid’, to give the reader a vivid sense of the fierce cold and the fierce distrust between the characters, to give a sense of danger and mystery to the journey the boy has to take across the freezing landscape with his father and the farm help. In another story, ‘Icicles’, the tone is more manic, close to William Gaddis perhaps, or even Virginia Woolf. And then the title story is a piece of pure, calm, poetic writing.
It is told in short sections. The narrator is alone in a small town in Indiana: he describes the town and the weather (Gass is brilliant on weather): ‘Sometimes I think the land is flat because the winds have levelled it, they blow so constantly.’ He writes about houses and neighbours and cats, the mood is meditative and oddly dislocated, as though this was a brilliant translation from
Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal and has lived in Paris since 1950. Her Collected Stories came out in 1996.
Age in year of publication: fifty-seven.
Helen Garner 1942–
1984 The Children’s Bach
The late twentieth century is Helen Garner’s stamping ground. Her novels, short stories and brilliant journalism are marked by an incisive intelligence and an exact command of language. Her writing is spare and sharp, like a sequence of photographs of sour city streets, her characters snatched in celluloid for just one second. In a line or two she captures intimately the habits of the young in the city, and the disorders of adult love. She is at her best in this mordant tale of urban family life in which her wit and singular dialogue are imbedded in an elegant threnody of Bach, Mozart, and a tangy mix of rock and soul.
Athena is married to Dexter, a man who wants to ‘live gloriously’ and who wears shirts that look like pyjama tops. They have two children, Arthur, and Billy, who is not quite right in the head and about whom Athena, at least, nurses no delusions. Elizabeth erupts from Dexter’s past, bringing with her Philip, the cool rock musician, and her younger sister Vicki. Matters and persons rearrange themselves, to the accompaniment of Philip’s rock rhythms, Dexter’s curly whistling and Vicki’s cacophony of vomiting after too much Campari and orange. But really this is the story of Athena’s search for her own music, for more than the city sounds, the burble of children and the distant chatter of neighbours. Through it all, Helen Garner’s offbeat humour adds wonderfully and contrapuntally to this story of the encounters, adjustments and confrontations of ordinary life.
Helen Garner was born in Geelong and lives in Melbourne. Her award-winning fiction includes Monkey Grip (1977), Honour & Other People’s Children (1980), Cosmo Cosmolino (1992), The Spare Room (2008) and short stories, Postcards from Surfers (1985). Her classic reportage on political correctness in action, The First Stone, was published in 1995.
Age in year of publication: forty-two.
William H. Gass 1924–
1968 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
(revised edition 1981)
The five stories in this book have different themes and settings, but there is something distinctive about the tone and the voice; Gass’s signature in these stories sets them apart. The style is poetic and at times gnarled. The sentences are worked on and sculpted. Gass is clearly as interested in language as he is in things; he gives the impression that the words he uses were cut out of stone. Yet he manages in the first long story, ‘The Pedersen Kid’, to give the reader a vivid sense of the fierce cold and the fierce distrust between the characters, to give a sense of danger and mystery to the journey the boy has to take across the freezing landscape with his father and the farm help. In another story, ‘Icicles’, the tone is more manic, close to William Gaddis perhaps, or even Virginia Woolf. And then the title story is a piece of pure, calm, poetic writing.
It is told in short sections. The narrator is alone in a small town in Indiana: he describes the town and the weather (Gass is brilliant on weather): ‘Sometimes I think the land is flat because the winds have levelled it, they blow so constantly.’ He writes about houses and neighbours and cats, the mood is meditative and oddly dislocated, as though this was a brilliant translation from
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