The Cost of Living: Early and Uncollected Stories

by Mavis Gallant

Book Overview

A New York Review Books Original
Mavis Gallant is renowned as one of the great short-story writers of our day. This new gathering of long-unavailable or previously uncollected work presents stories from 1951 to 1971 and shows Gallant's progression from precocious virtuosity, to accomplished artistry, to the expansive innovatory spirit that marks her finest work.

"Madeleine's Birthday," the first of Gallant's many stories to be published...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590173279
• ISBN13: 9781590173275
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

"Never have characters so adrift been so effectively anchored."

I remember my mother speaking of Mavis Gallant as she read the author's stories in The New Yorker. She was onto a good thing that took me much longer to realize. Gallant's writing reminds me of Yates and Cheever. This collection takes us all over including Montreal, New York, and Paris. My favorites were Madeline's Birthday, Thieves and Rascals, and Bernadette. The stories are melancholy, if not sad, but there is an intriguing humour in every one of them. A word of warning, the introduction is a wonderful tribute to Gallant by Jhumpa Lahiri but is so detailed that I wished I had read it after reading the stories themselves (the title of this review is taken from that Introduction).