First of all, let's get the title story of Mavis Gallant's [From the Fifteenth District] out of the way quickly, and then try to forget it. It's a brief jeu d'esprit about three ghosts who complain to the police that they are being haunted by living people, and when I first saw it in The New Yorker I expected to find the name of Donald Barthelme at the end. It's not the kind of thing Gallant does well….

What Mavis Gallant does do well is the reality of living people, and she does it so very well, so wittily, so convincingly, and with such unfailing grace that it makes me want to cheer, or weep, according to my mood and the particular story I'm reading.

The remaining eight stories show great variety, ranging widely in time (from 1920 to 1978) and space (from France to Hungary), but they have enough...