Reading Mavis Gallant's 1940s in the 1990s: 'The Fenton Child'

Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro both published their Selected Stories in 1996. These handsome volumes, one largely jet black, the other mostly cream white, seem to stand like magisterial bookends on a long shelf capable of accommodating Gallant's and Munro's previous work – including, between the two of them, some seventeen books of stories – and held up at either end by the twinned supports of two of our major readings of the short fiction written in Canada from 1950 on.