SOURCE: Abley, Mark. “Touring the City of Light.” Maclean's 99, no. 41 (13 October 1986): 66.

In the following review, Abley praises the journalistic qualities of Paris Notebooks.

Mavis Gallant, one of the best writers of fiction Canada has produced, left the country as a young journalist in 1950. In eight subsequent books of fiction, notably From the Fifteenth District (1979) and Overhead in a Balloon (1985), she revealed an eye for character and language as sharp as a cut diamond. The incisive, wary prose of Paris Notebooks, her first collection of nonfiction, demonstrates that she lost none of her skill as a reporter after she quit her feature-writing job at the Montreal Standard 36 years ago.

More than a third of the book comprises the journals that Gallant kept in Paris during May and early June of 1968. In those turbulent weeks a make-shift alliance of students and workers virtually closed down the city, shaking the foundations...