SOURCE: Ware, Tracy. Review of Across the Bridge, by Mavis Gallant. Studies in Short Fiction 32, no. 2 (spring 1995): 239-40.

In the following review, Ware evaluates the style of Across the Bridge, highlighting the ironic elements of several stories.

The important point about Mavis Gallant is that she writes magnificent short fiction. In Across the Bridge, she is at her best: the book seems destined to join The Pegnitz Junction (1973), From the Fifteenth District (1979), and Home Truths (1981) on the short list of Gallant's major collections. Nine of these 11 stories originally appeared in The New Yorker, with which Gallant has had a long association, and some will be familiar from their inclusion in the annual Best American Short Stories anthologies. Gallant's credentials are as impressive as her talents, yet the admiration she receives is strikingly restrained. In Reading Mavis Gallant (1989), Janice Kulyk Keefer notes that Gallant “is a writer who must...