A Fairly Good Time - 9781590179871

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 (née Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroin of A Fairly Good Time, is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by herfellow Canadians, this young, widowed girl—recently remarried to a French journalistnamed 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. Asthe fixed points in Shirley’s life begin to recede—Philippe having apparently thoughnot definitively left—her freewheeling, makeshift and self–abnegating ways cometo seem an aspect of devotion to her fellow man. Could the unreliable protagonistbe 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 divorcée, 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.