General Events
Elliott Holt | Mavis Gallant
Begins August 20, 2020 Online
Elliott Holt | Mavis Gallant, Green Water, Green Sky
Mavis Gallant is one of my favorite writers, and although she is primarily known for her short stories—she published 116 of them in the New Yorker—I love her two novels as well. Green Water, Green Sky, Gallant's debut, is a book about memory, family, and the meaning of home. Set in Venice, Paris, and Cannes, it follows a family of American expatriates, one of whom has a breakdown. Green Water, Green Sky is an episodic novel in four sections (interconnected stories, if you will) which display Gallant's masterful shifts in narrative perspective and her visceral exploration of displacement and exile.
Reading Schedule
Day 1| August 20: Chapter 1
Day 2 | August 21: Chapter 2 through the break on p. 306 ("She wondered if Flor was pregnant...")
Day 3 | August 22: Continue Chapter 2, from p. 306 (“That night, Bonnie got the invitation to Deauville...") to the break on p. 315, (through "All the same, thought Bonnie, it was a pity...")
Day 4 | August 23: Continue Chapter 2, from p. 315 ("Bob Harris had no division of purpose") to the break on p. 321 (through "It would have been too strong for anyone...")
Day 5 | August 24: Finish Chapter 2, from p. 321 (“Two days after this...") through "She emerged in triumph from the little wood..."
Day 6 | August 25: Chapter 3, from "Dreams of chaos were Wishart's meat..." to the break on p. 349 (through "It was the most dangerous of ideas, this ‘only you can save me,’...)
Day 7 | August 26: Finish Chapter 3, from p. 349, ("The rainstorm that afternoon was not enough") to the end.
Day 8 | August 27: Chapter 4 to The End.
Elliott Holt
is the author of the novel You Are One of Them (Penguin), a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her essays, book reviews, and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Time, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and has lived in Moscow, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York.