num_pages: 186
description: Contents:The Pegnitz junction -- The old friends -- An autobiography -- Ernst in civilian clothes -- O lasting peace -- An alien flower.In these dazzling stories, Mavis Gallant immerses us in the lives of ordinary people swept up in the upheaval and displacement that followed in the wake of the Second World War. A bitter yet stubbornly pragmatic woman prepares for what promises to be another disastrous Christmas with her mother, her aunt, and her would-be-war-hero uncle. Engaged to another man, a woman travels to Paris with her older lover and his young son. A wife recollects her complicated relationship with the refugee woman who had a brief affair with her husband. Small mercies form the backbone of a friendship between an actress and a police commissioner. A career soldier, now discharged and stranded in France, makes his first adjustments to life as a civilian. In elegant, diamond-sharp prose, Gallant distills the vanities, absurdities, and contradictions that lie at the heart of human behavior and fashions stories of rare power and insight.
language: English
title: The Pegnitz Junction: A Novella and Five Short Stories
titlecomplete: The Pegnitz Junction: A Novella and Five Short Stories
genres: 20th Century, Fiction, Short Stories, Canadian Literature, Canada
ratings_count: 80
publisher: Graywolf Pr