SOURCE: Allen, Brooke. “Brownout in the City of Light.” New Criterion 15, no. 4 (December 1996): 69-72.

In the following review, Allen evaluates the settings, themes, and tone of The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant in relation to the stories's autobiographical significance.

Postwar Paris is a mythical place, dear to the hearts of a whole generation of Americans. Art Buchwald's recent memoir, I'll Always Have Paris, blends the familiar ingredients once again: Sartre and de Beauvoir at the Deux Magots, The Paris Review, Alice B. Toklas, Harry's New York Bar (located at 5 rue Daunou, pronounced by American visitors “Sank Roo Doe Noo”), A. J. Liebling and Janet Flanner, Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Romain Gary. It was Hemingway's moveable feast, extended well into the 1950s. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, brilliant young Americans could shake the dust of Brooklyn or the Midwest off their feet while taking in the pleasures of...