A Fairly Good Time and Green Water, Green Sky - by Mavis Gallant (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"An NYRB Classics Original Mavis Gallant's two novels are as memorable as her many short stories. Full of wit, whim, and psychological poignancy, A Fairly Good Time, here accompanied by Green Water, Green Sky, encapsulates Gallant's unparalleled skill as a storyteller. Shirley Perrigny (nee Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroin of A Fairly Good Time, is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by her fellow Canadians, this young, widowed girl recently remarried to a French journalist named Philippe is fond of quoting from Jane Austen and Kingsley Amis to describe her life and of using her myopia as a defense against social aggression. As the fixed points in Shirley's life begin to recede Philippe having apparently though not definitively left her freewheeling, makeshift and self-abnegating ways come to seem an aspect of devotion to her fellow man. Could the unreliable protagonist be the unwitting heroine of her own story? Green Water, Green Sky, Gallant's first novel, is a darker tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcee, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter live like itinerants--in Venice, Cannes, and Paris--glamorous and dependent. From this untidy life and the false notes of her mother, Flor attempts to flee, with little hope of escape"--<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>AN NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINAL</b> <p/> Mavis Gallant's novels are as memorable as her renowned short stories. Full of wit and psychological poignancy, <i>A Fairly Good Time</i>, here with <i>Green Water, </i> <i>Green Sky</i>, encapsulates Gallant's unparalleled skill as a storyteller. <p/> Shirley Perrigny (née Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroine of <i>A Fairly Good Time</i>, is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by her fellow Canadians, this young widow--recently remarried to a French journalist named Philippe--is fond of quoting Jane Austen and Kingsley Amis and of using her myopia as a defense against social aggression. As the fixed points in Shirley's life begin to recede--Philippe having apparently though not definitively left--her freewheeling, makeshift, and self-abnegating ways come to seem an aspect of devotion to her fellow man. Could this unreliable protagonist be the unwitting heroine of her own story?<i> </i> <p/> <i>Green Water, Green Sky</i>, Gallant's first novel, is a darker tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcée, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter live like itinerants--in Venice, Cannes, and Paris--glamorous and dependent. With little hope of escape, Flor attempts to flee this untidy life and the false notes of her mother.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>Page after page, sentence after sentence, these novels remind us why Ms. Gallant stands as a master of 20th-century fiction. --Carmela Ciuraru, <i>The New York Times</i> <p/>"Both in life and on the page, [Gallant] blazed a trail no one since has dared follow." --Jhumpa Lahiri <p/> "Page by page . . . Mavis Gallant brings to life things beyond analysis. <i>A Fairly Good Time</i> is a very, very good novel." --R. V. Cassill, <i>Chicago Tribune</i> <p/> "In a sentence she could tilt a situation a few subliminal degrees . . . so that we begin to see her characters from a more compassionate or more satirical position. Gallant's craft and empathy are always ahead of us." --Michael Ondaatje <p/>"Gallant never bores; her stories are packed tight with dense, prickly detail...It is part of Gallant's restless and unsparing rigor to demand that a reader stay interested in every detail only as long as Gallant herself stays interested in them, and not a millisecond longer." -Amy Gentry, <i>Chicago Tribune </i> <p/> <b>Praise for <i>A Fairly Good Time<br></i></b><br> "Page by page...Mavis Gallant brings to life things beyond analysis. <i>A Fairly Good Time</i> is a very, very good novel." --R. V. Cassill, <i>Chicago Tribune </i> <p/> "[Gallant] is a virtuoso of perspective, and this is how she holds together a universe that would otherwise fly apart." --Susan Salter Reynolds, <i>Los Angeles Times </i><br> <b><i> </i></b><br> <b>Praise for <i>Green Water, Green Sky<br></i></b><br> "A subtle, disturbing, beautifully written novel...[Gallant] has with remarkable skill conveyed a sense of the passage of time as it appears to human beings--events that are separated by years seen in juxtaposition, the past often more substantial than the present." --Constance Pendergast, <i>Saturday Review</i> <p/> "Brief, intense and technically dazzling." --Lisa Allardice, <i>The Guardian</i><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Mavis Gallant </b>(1922-2014) was born in Montreal and worked as a journalist at the <i>Montreal Standard</i> before moving to Europe to devote herself to writing fiction. In 1950, after traveling extensively she settled in Paris, where she would remain for the rest of her life. Over the course of her career Gallant published more than one hundred stories and dispatches in <i>The New Yorker</i>. In 2002 she received the Rea Award for the Short Story and in 2004, the PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement. In addition to <i>A Fairly Good Time</i>, New York Review Books Classics publishes three collections of Gallant's short stories: <i>Paris Stories</i>, <i>Varieties of Exile</i>, and <i>The Cost of Living: Early and Uncollected Stories</i>. <p/> <b>Peter Orner</b> is the author of two collections of stories, <i>Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge</i> and <i>Esther Stories</i>, and two novels, <i>Love and Shame and Love</i> and <i>The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo</i>. He is also the editor of two books of oral history, <i>Underground America</i> and <i>Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives</i>. His book of nonfiction <i>Am I Alone Here?</i> will be published in November 2016. Orner has received Guggenheim and Lannan Foundation fellowships, and two Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at San Francisco State University.
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