Varieties of exile : stories / Mavis Gallant ; selected and with an introduction by Russell Banks.

The Fenton child -- The end of the world -- New Year's Eve -- The doctor -- Voices lost in snow -- In youth is pleasure -- Between zero and one -- Varieties of exile -- 1933 -- The chosen husband -- From cloud to cloud -- Florida -- Let it pass -- In a war -- The concert party.

Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she has lived in Paris for more than half a century. Varieties of Exile , Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir--stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

English.