Home Truths | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Article

Home Truths

Home Truths, by Mavis Gallant (Toronto, 1981; repr 1982), winner of the Governor General's Award, is a collection of 16 previously published stories about Canada and Canadians.
gallant, mavis
mavis gallant at the Standard, Montréal, May 1946 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-115248).

Home Truths, by Mavis Gallant (Toronto, 1981; repr 1982), winner of the Governor General's Award, is a collection of 16 previously published stories about Canada and Canadians. Prefaced by an introduction in which Gallant defends her status as an expatriate writer, the chronologically arranged stories simultaneously depict her precocious talent as a writer of flawless prose and her attempts to come to terms with her past and her country. Each of the book's 3 sections presents recurring Gallant motifs: the first examines the tortured relationships between parents and children; the second features young Canadians abroad in varieties of exile; and the final, the best in the collection, deals with memory. While the latter stories are not purely autobiographical, they are as close as Gallant has come to a precise evocation of her Montréal childhood and the wartime experiences of her youth. Occasionally finding us conservative, reticent and single-minded, Gallant nonetheless looks homeward with humour, compassion and grace.

Selected Works of
Home Truths