商品簡介
An NYRB Classics Original
Mavis Gallant’s two novels are as memorable as her many short stories. Full of wit, whim, and psychological poignancy,A Fairly Good Time, here accompanied by Green Water, Green Sky, encapsulates Gallant’s unparalleled skill as a storyteller.
Shirley Perrigny (nee Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroin of A Fairly Good Time, is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by herfellow Canadians, this young, widowed girl—recently remarried to a French journalistnamed Philippe—is fond of quoting from Jane Austen and Kingsley Amis to describe her life and of using her myopia as a defense against social aggression. Asthe fixed points in Shirley’s life begin to recede—Philippe having apparently thoughnot definitively left—her freewheeling, makeshift and self–abnegating ways cometo seem an aspect of devotion to her fellow man. Could the unreliable protagonistbe the unwitting heroine of her own story?
Green Water, Green Sky, Gallant’s first novel, is a darker tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcee, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter live like itinerants—in Venice, Cannes, and Paris—glamorous and dependent. From this untidy life and the false notes of her mother, Flor attempts to flee, with little hope of escape.
作者簡介
Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) was born in Montreal and worked as a journalist at theMontreal Standard before moving to Europe to devote herself to writing fiction. After traveling extensively she settled in Paris, where she lived until her death. She is the recipient of the 2002 Rea Award for the Short Story and the 2004 PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement. NYRB Classics has published three collections of Gallant’s stories:The Cost of Living: The Early and Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, Paris Stories, and Varieties of Exile.
