Voices Lost In Snow

We learned today of the passing of the brilliant Canadian writer Mavis Gallant, who died in Paris at the age of 91. I read one of her short stories, "Voices Lost In Snow" not too long ago. It was about a young girl named Linett who accompanies her father on a trip to Montreal. Linett's parents don't explain much, but she is learning to observe, and to understand the layers of meaning in what she sees, brushing against some profound and touching realizations.

And the language is so beautiful. Certain passages struck me as pure poetry. Like this:

The end of the afternoon had a particular shade of color then, which is not tinted by distance or enhancement but has to do with how streets were lighted. Lamps were still gas, and their soft gradual blooming at dusk made the sky turn a peacock blue that slowly deepened to marine, then indigo. This uneven light falling in blurred pools gave the snow it touched a quality of phosphorescence, beyond which were night shadows in which no one lurked. There were few cars, little sound. A fresh snowfall would lie in the streets in a way that seemed natural. Sidewalks were dangerous, casually sanded; even on busy streets you found traces of the icy slides children’s feet had made. The reddish brown of the stone houses, the curve and slope of the streets, the constantly changing sky were satisfactory in a way I now realize must have been aesthetically comfortable. This is what I saw when I read “city” in a book; I had no means of knowing that “city” one day would also mean drab, filthy, flat, or that city blocks could turn into dull squares without mystery.

Let's just call that a poem.

"One of the hardest things in the world," Gallant once said, "is to describe what happens next."

But oh, she did it masterfully.