Short Story Notes

I mentioned before that I now have read Mansfield's Selected Stories.  It turns out that by reading another 5 stories, I will also have read the entirety of The Garden Party, so I'll plan on getting to that soon.

I feel badly about having paused Alice Munro after I got roughly to the midpoint of her story collections.  The next one up is Open Secrets, but I don't think I will actually manage to crack it until the summer.  Still, I will see if I can elevate her back to one collection per season.  That would suggest I will have read everything of her by the end of 2024.

I've read a few individual stories by Mavis Gallant, but I don't think I've made it all the way through a collection.*  That will change soon.  Nonetheless, I find there is so much overlap between the various collections that it is really hard to know where to begin.  I probably should have started with The Cost of Living, which I incidentally do own, but I decided to start with the stories with more of a Canadian focus.

So the order in which I will attempt to read Gallant is:
Home Truths & Varieties of Exile** (there is a lot of overlap between the two)
The Cost of Living
Across the Bridge & The Pegnitz Junction
The Moslem Wife & Overhead in a Balloon
From the Fifteenth District & Paris Stories & The Other Paris
The End of the World & In Transit
Going Ashore (drawn almost entirely from uncollected stories)

And then her two novels - A Fairly Good Time & Green Water, Green Sky

While this certainly looks like a lot, there is quite a bit of overlap, as I mentioned.  After going through these various books, this completely covers The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant, though it may ultimately make more sense to read most of the stories in Collected Stories, since I do have this in hard copy. 

After I make good headway on this, I will plan on tackling Edna O'Brien and William Trevor.

* I blush to admit that not only have I already read The Moslem Wife, but I reviewed it!  No idea how that slipped my mind, but it does mean one book down already!

** Incidentally, Montreal Stories is just Varieties of Exile but with a different title!