An elegant, melancholic novella about memory, family and the meaning of home.
An elegant, melancholic novella about memory, family and the meaning of home.This is the tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcée, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter lead an itinerant existence – Venice, Canne and Paris as a backdrop – glamorous and dependent. When Flor attempts to flee this untidy life and the oppressive rule of her eccentric mother, she instead succumbs to a gradual decline into insanity.
Green Water, Green Sky was Mavis Gallant’s debut novel and is a quietly dazzling example of hermasterful shifts in narrative perspective and her visceral exploration of displacement and exile
‘One of the great short-story writers of our time.’ Michael Ondaatje
‘Shrewd, wonderful . . . [Gallant] was always a truth teller, in her life and in her work.’ Paul Bailey
‘Brief, intense and technically dazzling.’ Lisa Allardice
‘A very intense piece of writing, very dark, but light and absurd at the same time . . . [Gallant’s] body of work is unique and profound; I don’t think there will be another quite like her.’ Jhumpa Lahiri
‘Gallant is funny, exacting and stern . . . luminescent, subtle and lasting, Gallant’s chronicles of internal and external exile are a fitting tribute to a diasporic century’ Guardian
‘A subtle, disturbing, beautifully written novel.’ Saturday Review