Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories

From a PEN Award winner, these tales ranging from Depression-era Quebec to contemporary Vancouver offer “irresistible storytelling through and through” (Kirkus Reviews).

Canada is one of the world’s most diverse and gorgeous countries, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, with a wealth of experiences and people to match its incredible size and breadth. The nation’s impressive variety is on display in Home Truths, Mavis Gallant’s ode to her home country through stories.

Gallant moves effortlessly through time and place, taking the reader from Depression-era Quebec to 1950s Paris to contemporary Vancouver while dealing with the universal themes of the innocence of youth, intrafamily relations, and the expat’s growing feeling of distance from home. The pinnacle of the collection is Gallant’s moving Linnet Muir series, an autobiographical look at a young woman’s return to Montreal at eighteen after living abroad.

Home Truths is a compelling testament to Gallant’s enduring grace and humor.