SOURCE: Seibold, Douglas. “The Sly Subtleties of Mavis Gallant.” Chicago Tribune Books (28 May 1989): 4.

In the following review, Seibold summarizes the themes of In Transit, highlighting its treatment of the expatriate condition and honest characterizations.

Mavis Gallant, a native of Canada who makes her home in Paris, is one of the foremost living practitioners of the short story. Her rich, subtle fiction is a fixture in the annual collections of the year's best stories; it has appeared regularly in the New Yorker for at least 30 years; and each of the 20 stories included in In Transit was first published there.

Gallant does not appear to collect her work in chronological order. Over the past five years she has instead published three or four collections that seem to be organized according to subject, as is In Transit. Each story is concerned with characters either traveling or living in some country other...