Unforgettable ... She can deliver top-line disgust, the existentialist’s moldy bread and butter, showing how life curdles when it seems to lack any sane form ... With Gallant at the wheel, telling jokes over her shoulder, I enjoy being aesthetically carsick. The exhaust fuming off her pages, reeking of life’s absurdities and pathos, is invigorating. She blurs her reader’s sight, but in that blur are images of real, moving people.
What makes Hallberg’s editorial choices especially valuable not just to the reader but also to the writer is his decision to include three of Gallant’s earliest stories and a comprehensive bibliography. This means that turning to the book’s last page isn’t so much reaching the end of Gallant as receiving an invitation to go on from there ... These 44 stories trace Gallant’s progress as a writer ruthless in her self-scrutiny. Her prose grabs us by the throat, allowing us to see beyond our own miserly limitations.
