From the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant

From the Fifteenth District Reviews

• 
  Melinda

  An unforgettable collection of literary short stories. Gallant’s prose is striking in its simplicity and precise style. Complexities of displacement, and alienation with questionable conclusions unveiled. Character interconnections streamlined with absolute perfection.
  
  Nine stories taking place in Europe post Second World War exploring the frailty and plight of relationships. In one story an English family exits to the south of France to escape England’s rationing and debt under the guise of their father’s poor health. An actor, once a French soldier in Algeria, is gainfully employed in Paris. A self absorbed English family living on the Italian Riviera unconvinced Mussolini and the Germans may impact their lives greatly.
  
  A provoking collection of short stories examining human relationships with keen observation and depth, fatalistic and compassionate.
• 
  Emily M

  Glittering, unknowable short stories.
  
  Like her contemporary and fellow Canadian Alice Munro, Gallant was almost exclusively a short story writer and largely published by the New Yorker. Everyone agrees that she’s wonderful. Those of us who are iffy on short stories (maybe especially New Yorker stories) need motivation to get started. But it’s worth it, because it turns out everyone’s right.
  
  Before this collection, I had only read “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street.” That’s a story that is excellent, nuanced, subtle, but fairly conventional, until the end. Francine Prose described the end: “And then the story does the remarkable, unprecedented thing, its point of view bouncing around in time and space, then rocketing off into a universe of irremediable mistakes, inconsolable loss, and endless yearning.”
  
  It's hard to pinpoint the feeling of pure difference you get at the end of that story for someone who hasn’t read it, but I was reminded of it again and again while reading this collection. It seems to be Gallant’s style. Impeccably observed characters, detailed constructions of time, place, society… all this would make her readable but not memorable. What makes her memorable are the strange little incomprehensible leaps she makes in the narrative, usually late in each story. These are moments where you realize as the reader you have failed to grasp what it’s about. You may be too late to grasp it. Indeed, the information may not be there on the page for you to grasp. Secrets are hinted at but not revealed. Final lines often feel divorced from expectation, but it would be a mistake to say these stories trail off. Unlike many unresolved stories, they don’t cause frustration, or they didn’t cause frustration to me. I took these odd, abrupt, oblique endings to mean that human beings are finally unknowable, even to those closest to them. An Italian serving girl remains unpaid for her labour as Mussolini comes to power, but eats ice cream. A German actor in Paris must play the victim always, then later the Nazi officer. Three ghosts lodge complaints with the police that they are being haunted by the living, their memory misinterpreted. A grandmother spends quality time with her grandson… and learns what he will remember from the day.
  
  I was impressed by Gallant’s inhabiting all these different minds. She is less an expat writer than I imagined, or at least her expats are a mixed bunch, not just North Americans in Paris, but Polish writers, French hoteliers, Italian servants. I liked the strain of dry humour that seemed to run in the background of some stories. And I loved those strange moments when everything took flight and bounced around in time and space.
  
  There weren’t any weak entries here. Generally though, it might have been better to read the collection more slowly, and leave time between each story. I often feel that way about single author collections. Still, I’m up for more Gallant in the future.
  
• 
  Angela M

  I don't read short stories very often . I think it's because I'm disappointed that the story ends and I won't know anymore about a character that I have come to be interested in . So usually when I come across a collection I just pass it up . Something about the description of this collection appealed to me and I'm glad that I didn't this time. I would have missed an introduction to Mavis Gallant's writing .
  
  A young Italian girl leaves home to work for an English family who have settled in Italy , to care for their children at the beginning of WW II in the opening story "The Four Seasons" . This one is my favorite and is a perfect example of why short stories are difficult for me . I was left wondering about what would happen to the young girl , Carmela . In the "Remission ", a terminally ill man moves his family from England to the south of France and "The Moslem Wife " have an underlying theme of infidelity as well as the displacement that is seen in the other stories .The title story is short but brilliant . In these few pages we learn about the lives of three people (ghosts) with a twist about who is haunting whom.
  
  The one constant in all of the stories is WWII and its impact on these characters all European but yet displaced to a country other than where they were born . Some of the stories take place on the brink of the war , some during and after .
  
  I will admit that I am still partial to a full length novel but there are some beautifully written stories here that I'm glad I didn't miss .
  
  Thanks to Open Road Media and NetGalley .
• 
  Natia Morbedadze

  მეივის გალანტმა ნამდვილად დაიმსახურა მოთხრობების ოსტატის წოდება. კრებულიც შესანიშნავად არის აწყობილი - ისე, რომ მიუხედა���ად სრული დამოუკიდებლობისა (მეორე მსოფლიო ომი რომ გასდევთ ფონად, ამას თუ არ ჩავთვლით), მოთხრობები ერთმანეთში ისე გადადიან, დიდი მოცულობის ნაწარმოებების მოყვარულებიც კი რომ ვერ ვუპოვით წუნს და სიამოვნებით ჩავიკითხავთ ამბებს სხვადასხვა ქვეყანაში გაფანტულ ჩვეულებრივ ადამიანებზე, რომლებსაც მსოფლიო უბედურების ფონზე პირადი ისტორიები აქვთ გადასატანი.
• 
  Marilyn

  A great Canadian author, however I did struggle a bit with her writing style in this collection of short stories. I rated each story after I finished and I must say I liked 'Potter' the best. Lifestyles post World War II in Europe were much different than living here in Canada and she showed that well. This book was written in the 1970's. Ms. Gallant died in 2014.
• 
  Arja Salafranca

  rom the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant
  
  The late Mavis Gallant's stories
  are beguiling to read
  The late Mavis Gallant’s stories are beguiling to read – they creep up on you slowly, until you find yourself devouring each mostly lengthy story, wanting more. This collection, first published in 1979, and now re-released at the end 2014 by Open Road Media, is peopled by ordinary characters, ordinary but for the fact that they are caught at the crossroads of European history, and their lives are shaped by the lengthy shadow of the second world war.
  
  Comprising nine stories, the collection opens with ‘The Four Seasons’ which sets the tone for the atmosphere of these stories. They are located in a Europe battling to come to terms with the destruction wrought by the war, and the displacement of those lives affected profoundly by it.
  
  In ‘The Four Seasons’, we are introduced to Carmela, somewhere on the French/Italian Riviera – the borders shift depending on who is in power, domestic maid to an English couple, the Unwins, and their three-year-old twins. Carmela becomes intertwined in their lives – to the point that towards the end she is no longer even receiving her salary. Chronically short of money, they promise when war breaks out that they will send her wages on, but we know that will never happen. Not quite friend, a maid who becomes entrenched in the family, the nervous Mrs Unwin relying on her more and more, Carmela draws on strengths the more privileged Unwins apparently have no access to. A compelling piece.
  
  The effects come almost as a post-script
  
  ‘The Moslem Wife’, the second piece is a novella length tour de force. Netta Asher, the ‘Moslem wife’ of the title, takes over the lease of a hotel her father has run for years in the south of France. She marries her younger first cousin, Jack Ross, against her family’s wishes, but theirs is a happy marriage, bound by her loyalty to the business her father started, and Jack’s acceptance of life as the husband of a hotel manager, dabbling in his music. The atmosphere of a hotel on the French Riviera in the 1930s is vividly brought to life, and life flows slowly on, with its cast of characters, hotel guests, eccentrics who live at the coast and then Jack’s ailing mother who comes to stay. But war intervenes, once more, and as usual it will have a calamitous effect on all. The effects come almost as a post-script, long before that we are caught in the dramas of this world, Netta swirling at the circle of it all, and we, in turn, circle closer and closer to her.
  
  In equally astounding ‘The Remission’ we are once more on the Riviera – this time with another English couple – Alec and Barbara Webb in the 1950s. Alec is dying and the National Health can do nothing more for him. And so they bring their three children with them, with Alec preparing to die in the sun.
  
  A crumbling Edwardian home is purchased for them by family members, and they go down for what they believe will be a short time there. But the years drag on. Alec grows weaker and weaker; the children grow older and it’s the girl, Molly, who will be responsible for bringing another man, a part-time actor, into their mother’s lives. When Alec goes, as he will, he will barely be remembered, life carries on as it will, some lives leaving nothing behind but wisps. The hapless Barbara is not a conventionally attractive character with her reckless abandon, her laissez-faire attitude towards money and her children, but such is the strength of Gallant’s writing that we’re drawn to her despite all these failings, compulsively reading on, the light of the Riviera shining throughout the story, illuminating love, and the growth we all twist through as we go on through our lives.
  
  It’s a squalid, post war world, where the bath is rough enough to scour you and the flat reeks of tiredness and poverty
  Equally brilliant was ‘The Latehomecomer’. Here we are introduced to Thomas Bestermann in 1950, recently released back to Berlin after being a prisoner of war and being caught up in bureaucratic delays in France, like so many other ‘late homecomers’. He returns to the flat his mother now shares with her new husband, a detail she only tells him about when they are standing at the front door. It’s a squalid, post war world, where the bath is rough enough to scour you and the flat reeks of tiredness and poverty. His brother is still missing, and his mother, in her early forties, is tired and resigned, covering her smile when she laughs, hiding the missing teeth. Strangers now to each other, they must navigate that awful space between them, a place where words can’t correct the chasms of the past.
  
  
  Gallant's talent shines in this collection of post war lives
  
  ‘Potter’ meanwhile focuses closely on a fortysomething a Polish poet and translator who falls for a feckless twentysomething Canadian girl/woman, Laura. Piotr, called Potter by her, watches as Laura routinely disappears, goes off with another man to Venice, with reassurances that he’s only an ‘old friend’ although they might find themselves in bed together. Piotr has a wife back in Poland, but while that relationship continues to wither away, Laura rips him in two, and we follow his agonising destruction as love tears him apart: “He hesitated; where love was concerned he had lost his bearings.” A beautifully told story that gets to the heart of unrequited love and lust and takes us right into Piotr while also providing a glimpse into the enclosed world of an ex-pat Polish community in Paris.
  
  A meditative piece, a story that moves slowly across a day – Christmas
  
  In ‘His mother’ we peer through the glass inside a Budapest flat: a woman lives alone after her son has managed to get out to Scotland, this is back in the Communist days. He marries, has children and his mother watches from afar, her life filled with memories, the past, letters from her son, “the insignificant sadness of a lifetime” while she shares her flat with a grandfather, and his pregnant granddaughter. She cannot kick them out, they are too powerful, know too much.
  
  In the last story, ‘Irina’ we’re in central Europe now, where a woman who was once married to a powerful man now lives out her days in a flat with a new companion. When her grandson Riri comes to stay, he discovers that life has changed even for her. This is a meditative piece, a story that moves slowly across a day – Christmas – in lives that are quiet, yet no less ‘insignificant’ than any others.
  
  Gallant’s talent in this wonderful collection shines a powerful beam over these lives, over moments, days, decades where the world turns, and lives spin and change in the tumult of the times and all that’s left is to hold on, and accept.
• 
  Michael

  The more I read and reread Mavis Gallant, the more convinced I am that she was the greatest voice in fiction of the 20th century. Every story in this collection rings true, like a clear bell. She died early this year, leaving a hole deeper than any can fill, but she also left a lifetime of reflected experience, of shiny, gem-like stories about people living in imposed and self imposed isolation and sorrow, people who live on in small lives with small gestures of strength and hard won nonchalance; these short masterpieces are her treasure, the inheritance left to those still searching for moments of sense and reason in her clear, strong words.
• 
  Katherine

  “When the shutters are closed on a room, it is for sleep or for love” (39).
  “These families, by now plaited like hair…” (39).
  "'Religion is more than love. It is supposed to tell you why you exist and what you are expected to do about it'" (58).
  “‘I can’t be Venus and Barclay’s Bank. You have to choose’” (60).
  “‘I’ve discovered something else,’ she said abruptly. ‘It is that sex and love have nothing in common. Only a coincidence, sometimes. You think the coincidence will go on and so you get married. I suppose that is what men are born knowing and women learn by accident’” (60-61).
  “‘Send me some books. As long as they are in English. I am quite sick of the three other languages in which I’ve heard so many threats, such such boasting, such a lot of lying’” (63).
  “‘Sentiment does not keep families whole--only mutual pride and mutual money’” (64).
  "And I am going to be thirty-seven and I have a dark, an accurate, a deadly memory" (72).
  “...though in better times it might have interested that part of his mind he kept fallow…” (76).
  “Christening robes had been her special joy, but fewer babies were being baptized with pomp, while nylon was gradually replacing the silks and lawns she worked with such care. Nobody wanted the bother of ironing flounces and tucks in a world without servants” (79).
  “Only the children were made uneasy by these strange new adults, so squat and ill-favored, so quarrelsome and sly, destructive, of nature and pointlessly cruel to animals. But, then, the children had not read much, were unfamiliar with films, and had no legends to guide them” (81).
  “She saw, in the way he looked at her, that she had begun her journey south a wife and mother whose looks were fading, and arrived at a place where her face seemed exotic. Until now she had thought only that a normal English family had taken the train, and the caricature of one had descended. It amounted to the same thing--the eye of the beholder” (83).
  "Barbar and Wilkinson made jokes about the French widow-lady, but the children did not. To replace their lopped English roots they had grown the sensitive antennae essential to wanderers. They could have drawn the social staircase of Rivabella on a blackboard, and knew how low a step, now, had been assigned to them" (106).
  "I had put my hand over the name, leaving a perfect palm print. I said, 'I suppose there are no razor blades and no civilian shirts in Berlin. But some ass is already engraving nameplates'" (117).
  "Winter twilight must have been the prevailing climate here until an air raid let the seasons in" (123).
  "I sat with Martin at the table, where my mother had spread a lace cloth (the vanished tenants') and over which the April sun through lace curtains laid still another design" (125).
  "All the fat men of comic stories and of literature were to be Willy Wehler to me, in the future" (125).
  "The old man observed Gabriel closely, watching to see how his orphaned nephew had been brought up, whether he broke his bread or cut it, with what degree of confidence he approached his asparagus" (140). *I love that last part.
  "'She was said to be taking singing lessons,' he added, as if there were something wrong with that" (141).
  "And it would not have been in Gabriel's power to equate banknotes to a child's despair" (146).
  "Released from immediate danger, a few of the aliens sat and stood straighter, looked nonchalant or offended, depending on how profound their first terrors had been" (148).
  "Another recalled that on the subject of personal riches Christ had been ambiguous yet reassuring" (148).
  "His friends preferred films in which women presented no obstacles and created no problems and were show either naked or in evening dress" (150).
  "A woman can always get some practical use from a torn-up life, Gabriel decided. She likes mending and patching it, making sure the edges are straight. She spreads the last shred out and takes its measure: 'What can I do with this remnant? How long does it need to last?' A man puts on hi life ready-made. If it doesn't fit, he will try to exchange it for another. Only a fool of a man will try to adjust the sleeves or move the buttons; he doesn't know how" (151).
  "He lived about sixteen thousand and sixty days, many of which he does not remember" (163).
  "Mrs. Essling would like relief from this charge. 'Angel' is a loose way of speaking. She is astonished that the Professor cannot be more precise. Angels are created, not born. Nowhere in any written testimony will you find a scrap of proof that angels are 'good.' Some are merely messengers; others have a paramilitary function. All are stupid" (167).
  "They lay like starfish, smoking in the strewn, scattered way of the downhearted" (170).
  “His smile was like a sentence uttered too soon” (190).
  “The pregnant girl’s social clockwork gave her Piotr along with the next course” (191).
  “He wondered if his discovery of chestnut meringues at Rumpelmayer’s tearoom in 1938 was of the slightest interest” (191).
  “...otherwise he was a demand, a claim, a dead weight on her life; he was like the soft, curled-up, dejected women who seemed to make an equal mess of love and cigarette ash” (192).
  “Piotr noticed that when the pair were alone they argued in French. It was their language for reproach and for justification” (194).
  “All that prevented him from weeping in the street was the thought that he had never seen a man doing that” (195).
  "As they neared the Seine he had a childlike Christmas feeling of expectancy, knowing that the lighted flank of Notre Dame would be reflected, trembling, on the dark water" (197).
  "Perhaps she meant this kindly, but even a doctor can have curious motives, especially one who shows her gums when she laughs, and whose husband gets up early to avoid being alone with her" (198).
  
• 
  Morgan

  I liked the collection— most of the stories focused on the post-war period and the kind of isolation and loneliness inherent. The prose reminded me a little bit of Mary Gaitskill’s unsentimental and quick brushstroke style, and the content (the kinds of situations and characters) reminded me a little bit of James Joyce’s dubliners.
• 
  Eric

  What beautiful language. I look forward to reading the sequels and about the previous districts.
• 
  Chris Wolak

  I'd never heard of Mavis Gallant (1922-2014). Perhaps I should be embarrassed to admit this in public, because she was a respected, prolific writer. Over 100 of her short stories were published in The New Yorker, the first in 1951.
  
  Jhumpa Lahiri credits Mavis as "the single most important influence on her own writing."
  
  Mavis was a Canadian from Quebec who worked first as a journalist before deciding to be a full-time fiction writer. She made Paris her home.
  
  There are nine stories in this collection, each of which is concerned in some way with World War II, before, during, and after: From the lazy coastal life of southern France and northwest Italy before the war, to what it was like in Italy, France, and Germany during the war, to how people adjust to the changing world in the years immediately following the war and well on into the the Cold War.
  
  In "The Four Seasons" there's a completely self-absorbed English family living on the northwest coast of Italy prior to WWII who are certain war will not break out because Hilter and Mussolini say they don't want war. When war comes they stubbornly insist they won't be bullied out of the country. Inevitably, they are desperate to leave.
  
  "The Moslem Wife" is a fascinating story about a woman hotel owner in the south of France who deals with the changing tides of the war and the ghosts it leaves, such as one man who "got on the wrong side of the right side at the wrong time." Her husband is stuck in America during the war and she realizes she can't write anything real to him about her situation and so there are silences in her letters, the "silence imposed by the impossibility of telling anything real." It's a story about the realities of war for civilians, a story that breaks the silence that is too often unbreakable in real life.
  
  In "The Latehomecomer" we see the anger of a young German man who was a POW in France until 1950. His anger is not at the French or the Russians, but the older generations of German men--men who hid below ground in the relative safety of bunkers while teenage boys and then teenage girls pulled anti-aircraft duty above. In this story we see how deeply war shapes and changes life--from who women marry and why to what names newborns receive to what men do in the kitchen--and how one's lot is shaped by social-economic status in war and peace.
  
  All of the stories were breathtaking to read for the first time and some made me want to reread them immediately. One such is "His Mother," the story of a mother whose life and the changing circumstances of life in the Soviet Union are revealed in thoughts around letters to her son who defected to Glasgow on a soccer trip.
  
  The stories are literary fiction, to be sure. There is no standard plot that drives the stories. I found myself reading slowly to absorb the story, yet turning the pages quickly to see what would happen next. What morsel of insight was around the corner? Would a long suffering character find some relief? What slap upside the head would a deluded character receive?
  
  These are stories that tell deep truths about life and war and how people carry on in world that has been forever altered. And although the collection ends on a high note, these stories will take you through the wringer.
  
  This review originally appeared on my blog. Visit the link to enter to win a digital copy through 1/19/15 :
  http://wildmoobooks.blogspot.com/2015.... I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review through France Book tours.
• 
  Jesse

  It's almost unfair not to give this book five stars for failing to be consistent in the level of astonishing brilliance it sets out for itself. A bunch of the stories here are the best stories I've ever read-- they're slow and deep and human, giving life to so many quiet truths about youth, age, longing, and all that. "The Moslem Wife," obviously, and the fantastic "Potter," and at least half the stories along with them.
  
  However there are a couple of times when the stories drag a little bit or their purpose becomes obscure. These stories are still huge and strong, but next to their betters they're clearly not as fine as they could be. Still-- writing doesn't get a good deal better than this.
• 
  Lisa

  First experience reading this amazing author. There is a starkness to her writing-a poetry in the matter-of-factness of her descriptions and storytelling of the daily living experiences of folks adjusting to life after WWII. Each story had a subtle yet dramatic affect on me and I am still trying to figure out why that was. I felt like I was digesting material on a higher level with ease and pleasure. A great collection and a masterful writer.
• 
  David

  The title story is near perfect. The rest are tales of unhappy expats awaiting their doom
• 
  Ian M. Pyatt

  Simply amazing. My first ever book by Ms. Gallant. I look forward to reading another one.
• 
  Glen

  Mavis Gallant is usually anthologized as a Canadian writer, which is appropriate since she was a Canadian national and never sought citizenship elsewhere, but she spent most of her adult life in Paris, and in this collection at least, there are but scant references to her homeland. Her stories here present her as what I would call, borrowing Nietzsche's term, a "good European", in that these tales, all set in close temporal proximity to World War II, are set entirely in Europe (mostly France and Italy) and deal with the complications the war added to already complex lives. Most of all though these are human stories, and the major themes are loss, loneliness, and the myriad sundry ways in which human lives can come so close to being close, only to veer away into alienation and receding distance. Her stories are masterful, bringing to my mind her younger countrywoman, Alice Munro, in her ability to pack stories with seemingly incongruous observations that nonetheless work together to provide a fuller and more nuanced portrait of her characters, and that allow her stories to repay repeated readings. This is a wonderful collection.
• 
  Frank

  Is this her best collection? There certainly isn’t a single weak story, a weak moment even in this book. But then again I have yet to read a collection of hers that contains a dud – as I’m constantly being reminded on reading and rereading stories by her that had been lingering in neglect on my shelves for about 15 years or more. A tremendous and still underappreciated author, it seems to me.
  
  One conundrum is the subtitle: A novella and Eight Short Stories? Three of the stories, "The Four Seasons", "The Moslem Wife", "The Remission", and "Baum, Gabriel (1935- )", average between 13,000 and 17,000 words, the others are shorter. But which of these four is supposed to be the novella is anyone's guess. The opening story, "The Four Seasons", has numbered sections one might perceive as chapters; then again some of the other three are even slightly longer. So... A Novella and Eight Short Stories – maybe. Maybe just a collection of nine terrific (and sometimes longish) short stories.
• 
  Karen Carlson

  rec by Jeet Heer
  https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1...
  "Of Gallant's many books, I'd recommend From the Fifteenth District (stories that keep circling back to fascist complicity in Vichy France) and The Pegnitz Junction"
• 
  Lucy

  S
• 
  Mike Mahany

  Gallant is one of my favorite writers. She explores characters and their situations and dilemmas in deeply profound ways. This book looks at characters in Europe in the gradual aftermath of the war.
• 
  Katherine Mazzanti

  Just the short story “From the Fifteenth District”
• 
  Paulita Kincer

  This is a series of short stories, some in France or Italy or Germany, all those western European countries that we Americans love to visit, soaking up the culture. But Gallant goes far beyond the surface of these countries and people who we so admire.
  
  The short stories are set around World War II, some of them occurring before, some after or during. The stories aren't about the war though, but often the characters are affect by the war.
  Each story is like peeking into someone's window and seeing the real them, the one they might hide from the rest of the world.
  The black and white cover is foreshadowing of the stories to come as they definitely have a melancholy feel throughout. The richness of Gallant's words only deepen the effect.
  Here's an excerpt from "The Four Seasons" where a young Italian girl travels to a seaside village to serve as a nanny to an English family of outsiders:
  "'Mussolini is trying to get away from those oversized families,' said Mrs. Unwin with confidence.. She sat on a high stool, arranging flowers in a copper bowl. She quashed her cigarette suddenly and drank out of a teacup. She seemed to Carmela unnaturally tall. Her hands were stained, freckled, old, but she was the mother of Tessa and Clare, who were under three and still called "the babies." The white roses she was stabbing onto something cruel and spiked had been brought to the kitchen door by the chauffeur from Castel Vittorio. This time he had given Carmela a diffident nod."
  
  Gallant delves into each character, revealing things that we might prefer not to know, wanting to engage only with the surface beauty but realizing the complexity of each person, no matter their nationality or position during the war. We meet a German prison of war home long after the war had ended because no one thought to send him home from France He finds his mother remarried and very changed. We meet a Jewish man who blessedly escaped Europe before the war and returns in search of an heir for the business he has built in Argentina, but it has to be the right kind of heir. The boy, now a man, is repelled by the uncle who escaped the atrocities.
  This is a book filled with stories of deep emotion that dig beneath the surface Europe we love.
• 
  Gaele

  A collection of short stories set in Europe after the end of World War II, these nine stories all deserve to be savored and read with time after to ponder and absorb the nuances. Mavis Gallant has a deft hand with construction of a short story, a skill that is apparent and highlighted with her clever use of description and emotive prose that brings forth the characters in ways that highlight the deprivations, relief and struggle each endured after the war.
  
  Every word in a short story must count for something, often doing double duty to enlighten and instill a sense of the place or the person for the reader. What emerges is the humanity and the several ways in which we are all not so different, despite circumstances or actions. These are not the famous or lauded of the war years: each story is a ‘normal’ person, insignificant in the grand scheme but star of their own particular stories. These are stories of survival and perseverance against odds, some circumstantial, others self-imposed, and each brings plenty of fuel for imagination and empathy.
  
  These are some masterfully crafted stories, bound to please fans of the genre, and a wonderful example for those new to short stories of how they should be written. Gallant has a tone that is varies between flippant or nonchalant, as if the characters are reacting to their situations, or the narration is simply an uninvolved being retelling what they see without great attachment. Yes, many are somber, and all seem to have a common them of not letting go, but the overall impression leaves you wanting more writing in this manner, even as each story stands alone perfectly well.
  
  I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
  
• 
  Andrea Stoeckel

  [ I received this book free from the Blog Words and Peace, and I thank her and OpenRoad Media for their generousity. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising]
  
  Mavis Gallant, a Canadian expat who spent the last part of her life prior to her death in 2014 living and writing in Paris. Her work was extrodinary, earning her many accolades during her life. Although this series of stories is rather short, the topics are extant on living and working, surviving or not, in post war Europe. Often told as one would tell a friends, the stories are haunting, the topics difficult, the reading at times forced me to find something else more cheerful to distract myself.
  
  I can't say I loved outright any of the stories: of a woman who stayed behind during the war to keep the rental agreement "alive" so the pensionarre could remain open. Of a professor who was "infatuated" with a woman who didn't understand what commitment meant as they were of pre and post war generations. Of a grandmother who would rather be with an old friend over her own family. Of a family whose consumptive husband forces a move to the Riviera where the wife's choices further bankrupt the lives and emotions of the rest if them. Of an actor growing older and being lost in his past glory. And others.
  
  A book to return to; a book of melancholy; a book of emotions, Gallant is a new writer to me and I will enjoy running into her work in the future. She can turn a splendid phrase and describe things so adroitly they will take your breath away.
• 
  MaryJane Brodeck

  From The Fifteenth District is a collection of short stories about European emigres trying to find their way in the world during pre and post WW II. A somber quality with themes of relationships, aging, displacement and longing are woven throughout the stories. Of the nine short stories, the longer short stories were dense and drawn out compared to the shorter ones. Her stark writing style has a flippant and nonchalant manner to it.
  
  Here are some quotes from the book demonstrating her writing style:
  
  "His smile was like a sentence uttered too soon."
  
  "All that prevented him from weeping in the street was the thought that he had never seen a man doing that."
  
  "I've discovered something else", she said abruptly. "It is that sex and love have nothing in common. Only a coincidence, sometimes. You think the coincidence will go on and so you get married. I suppose that is what men are born knowing and women learn by accident."
  
  
  Overall, her writing is haunting, sad and beautiful. If you read too much of her stories in one sitting, you may feel exhausted, as if you've just gobbled down a turkey dinner. I read the book in small bites --just enough to get a sweet taste, but longing for more the next time.