Across the Bridge by Mavis Gallant

Across the Bridge Reviews

• 
  Lark Benobi

  There is something very elusive and magical about Mavis Gallant's style. It seems to me that Gallant perfected the use of free indirect discourse in discussing familial groups, a narrative style that links her to other (mostly women) writers all the way back to Jane Austen. Gallant moves in and out of characters' points of view with effortless ease, like a drone that can situate itself anywhere in a scene including the inner souls of the characters, and while doing so, she also mysteriously establishes a group awareness among the characters, of shared thoughts and values...while at the same time also allowing for an ironic exchange between herself and her reader to take place. It's remarkable. Each story is more like a journey around an old house than it is like reading, and you're constantly surprised by what is around the corner. Nowhere is her mastery more apparent imo than in the story "Dede," collected here, where all kinds of random facts and events are built up slowly into a fictional truth where nothing is said and yet everything is revealed.
• 
  Will

  “The Fenton Child” is the stand-out here, and the rest are ok but not among Mavis Gallant’s better stories. She is not one of the few writers to get better with age, but every now and then she can write something as good as her early and (especially) her mid-career work. Unsurprisingly, though the bridge of the title story is the Pont de la Concorde, the American hardcover uses the Pont de Notre Dame while the Carroll & Graf paperback has the Pont des Invalides. One can only imagine that cover meeting: “What? This is Paris? What’s this river doing here? Where’s the Eiffel Tower? How about we get that Cartier-Brassaï guy?”
• 
  AC

  I much prefered the first half, including the title story.
  
  That said, Gallant is a wonderful writer
• 
  Frank

  Probably one of her strongest collections, and markedly warmer, with a less detached and cynical tone than some of her other work. This is immediately evident in the opening series of four connected stories (grouped under the title ‘The Carette Sisters’ in the later collection Selected Stories). This fragmentary mininovella offers a strong statement about male weakness (a frequent motif in Gallant’s fiction) and female strength and solidarity, and I wonder whether these stories about a pair of sisters only slightly older than Gallant herself might be partly based on people she knew. In her avowedly autobiographical Linnet Muir stories (collected both in Home Truths and Selected Stories), the protagonist has a French-Canadian nurse called Olivia Carette, who seems to be something of a surrogate mother for the young girl that is Gallant’s alter ego. In the four opening stories of this collection, the Christian name of the Carette sisters’ mother is never mentioned, but it plausible to assume it is the same character.
  
  And if she and her daughters are based on people Gallant knew well and had a warm relationship with (more so, it would seem, than with her own parents), that could account for the mellower tone of these stories, in which the sisters’ lower class milieu and their varying setbacks and life choices are set down without the caustic detachment or even slight mockery that characterizes much of her other work. This becomes especially clear if one compares the second of these stories with the admittedly very funny but much more acerbic early story ‘The deceptions of Marie-Blanche’ (from The Other Paris). In that earlier story, a farcical courtship somewhat similar to the one described in these stories is played out in a much more grotesque way. In this later account, the stress is not on the limitations of the catholic women’s lower class outlook so much as on the conscious choices they make (and the fun is mainly at the expense of the pitiful the suitor, who is dependent on the marriage to save him from military service in the Korean War!).
  
  The Carette series closes off with a, for Gallant’s standards, almost sentimental image: one the sisters hugging her pregnant daughter-in-law after the latter’s no-good husband has left the room in an angry sulk. Almost sentimental, because Gallant’s sharp eye for wry details and aversion of common pieties prevent these stories from getting too soppy. Nevertheless, I think the entire collection is markedly less satiric than some of her earlier collections (especially the very funny Overhead in a Balloon). There is more surface reconciliation, more of an attempt at quiet resignation, at finding some measure of satisfaction within the limits imposed by reality, than in many of her other collections. And nowhere more movingly so, in my opinion, than in the terrific ‘A State of Affairs’, about an aging Polish emigré taking care of his wife, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
• 
  Diane

  This is the first book that I have read by this author. She was recommended by a fellow reader, who knew of my fondness for short stories. I read this volume over the course of an afternoon. The first four stories - 1933, The Chosen Husband, From Cloud to Cloud, and Florida - focus on the Carette sisters, their mother, and the younger sister's son.
  
  Gallant's writing is excellent, even beautiful, and she has a gift for characterization, especially in female characters. However, there is always the feeling of distance, of emotional remoteness. I'm reminded of
  The Goldfinch by
  Donna Tartt, another book with lovely writing, but cold with no real emotion or soul.
  
  The only character in any of the stories that I sort of like is Berthe Carette. She is smart, independent, and sensible. She is also saddled with a younger sister, Marie, who is completely incapable of taking care of herself, even in late middle age. More than once, it is commented that Berthe is having to take a man's role - as breadwinner for the family, as the head of the family. Berthe looks after her mother and sister. I seriously doubt that changes even after Marie's marriage. Despite this, Berthe comes across as content with her life. She's certainly better off than Marie, who is utterly helpless and has a dreadful son.
  
  I would have liked more stories about the Carette sisters (without Raymond, please). However, the remaining stories have nothing to do with them and are a big of a mixed bag. I found "Across the Bridge" overly long. A young woman is engaged to a man she does not love. Instead, she wants someone else, who apparently doesn't want her. It was rather tedious. "The Fenton Child" was intriguing, but confusing.
  
  I still have
  Overhead in a Balloon: Twelve Stories of Paris, but I think I'll wait to read it.
• 
  Abby

  Gasp! Beautiful and strange and haunting and sad. She’s a master.
• 
  Margaret

  Makes you want to visit Paris in the 1940s, though I'd settle for Paris in 2008. Also makes me glad I'm not a Catholic woman in 1940s Montreal. Beautifully evocative prose - "Mlle. Dias de la Corta" is particularly masterful.
• 
  sosser

  her elegant writing puts me into a happy trance, broken only by my own laughter at her sharp wit. every word is a pleasure to read.
• 
  Trina

  Mavis Gallant is such a treasure. Her stories are modest but powerful. I've read another short story collection by her, the Paris Stories, which I found a bit more memorable, but they are all elegantly written. I especially loved the stories set in Montreal in this collection.
• 
  Roberto Iacobacci

  Well written stories that pull you into the setting. I particularly enjoyed the stories set in post-war Montreal. They gave a great sense of the family and religious tensions at play during that historic period. I gave the book 3 stars but it's more of a 3.5.
• 
  Adam

  The first few stories are great but it does drag and get a bit samey toward the end
• 
  Elizabeth Strauch

  A few duds for me (mostly for lack of understanding the context), but favorites were A State of Affairs, Across the Bridge, Mlle. Dias de Corta, and The Fenton Child.
• 
  Jan Stinchcomb

  A smart, incisive collection that has stood the test of time. Such an interesting look at bilingual/bicultural life in Montreal and Paris.
• 
  Richard

  An interesting collection of short stories about people. Amazing how the characters and story can be so well developed. I will read the Montreal stories collection.
• 
  Katherine Mazzanti

  Just the short story “Dédé”
• 
  Marian

  I feel a bit ungenerous at three stars, as some stories are real knockouts. Three and a half stars would work better.
  
  The whole is marred by a few pieces that, to me, are ponderous and unduly knotty, but even these stories are repositories of intelligence, insight, and surreptitious wit, with just one dud ("Kingdom Come"). It felt surprising to find a broad range of tone, subject, and era, which, though impressive, makes it hard to come away with a unified feeling about the collection. I'm definitely motivated to read more of Gallant, in hopes of finding a more integrated set of stories; and there are always the novels.
• 
  b bb bbbb bbbbbbbb

  A mostly crufty and bland collection of stories without much heart. A few are somewhat engaging, but even those are underwhelming. The stifling effect of manners, social graces, honor, etc is a recurring theme, but isn't very interesting.
• 
  Harry

  A collection of short stories none of which have "endings".
• 
  Ibis3

  NCL.2006-10-01
• 
  Sally

  This book seems to have dated itself way too much for me to understand/appreciate. This is compounded by the fact that everything is hinted at instead of fully described.
• 
  Susan Ozment

  Lovely short stories. Montreal, poverty stricken in Spain, woman journalist.