SOURCE: Hatch, Ronald B. “Missing Connections.” Essays on Canadian Writing 41 (summer 1990): 21-5.

In the following review, Hatch calls the publication of In Transit a watershed event in Gallant's career and surveys the stories in the collection.

In the present state of commercial publishing, writers who shun publicity run the risk of finding their work out of print, for a book's success frequently depends on “selling” the author. In the case of Mavis Gallant, whose personal life has always remained private, the result has been that some of her finest short stories have never been collected in book form. The publication of In Transit helps to rectify this situation, as it brings together many of the stories originally published in the New Yorker between 1954 and 1969. The editors, however, have made no attempt to be exhaustive; none of Gallant's stories from lesser-known magazines and journals has been included. Still, the...