Overhead in a Balloon – Old Paper & Cats, Reviews by S. Hargrave

A Kitty Case of Sniffles

It’s been one of those weeks. I thought it would be busy but it got even more busy when we had to deal with a vet appointment for Bandersnatch. She’s fine, but she’s got the sniffles in a way that I wasn’t expecting cats to get sniffles. Sneezing? Expected. Coughing? Sure, but it looks a bit weirdly like puking. Kitty mucous dripping out her cute little orange and pink nose? Now, that was surprising.

Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris is a bright blue hardcover book by Mavis Gallant. A small picture of a hot-air balloon sits amid the title.

We got some lysine chews, and she’s doing much better now, but the stress of taking a cat to the vet that would rather be anywhere else, plus worrying about kitty pneumonia really wore me out. If feels like, after everything that’s happened in the last few months, I need the time and space to sort out my headspace. But will I ever get time to do that?

A calico tabby lies curled beside a copy of Overhead in a Balloon.

Original Publication

Mavis Gallant’s Overhead in a Balloon is a collection of short stories, the overwhelming majority of them having first appeared in the pages of the New Yorker. I’ve been reading the magazine for about five years now, so it’s always interesting to see work that was published in its pages in the past. I know that with the New Yorker’s centennial this year there’s been a lot of books and collections published about the magazine and compilations of work it has featured. I haven’t quite been able to commit to those books because most of them are tomes and I’m still on the edge of a reading slump.

So this book was a nice peek into a period in time, without wading too deeply into a hundred years of history and trends.

An orange tabby cat curls beside a bright blue book. The book is Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris by Mavis Gallant.

Structural Interest

Overhead in a Balloon is a book of short stories, but they exist together in a complex arrangement that is the signature of Gallant’s shorter fiction. They do not quite compose a novel in short stories, though they do hang together in a careful order. They share characters who offer interlocking perspectives, and evolutions that happen across time in a shared city. Gallant clusters the stories like one is hearing about a circle of friends or acquaintances at a party. One set of narratives centres around an art dealer and his gallery and his employee. Another is about a famous writer’s estate and the literary hangers-on that are arguing over it. There is plenty of sparkling wit, dry humour, and caustic notes on the human condition and life in the arts.

An orange cat sleeps peacefully with its paws and tail curled up to its nose. Beside her is a bright blue book.

The Feeling of Elsewhere

I think what I’m drawn to most in Gallant’s work is her ability to create a feeling of elsewhere in a subtle way. These stories take the reader to Paris, but not the tourist part of Paris. There is no dropping of location names and trying to convince me that she knows the city. Instead, she lets it speak for itself, taking the reader to the streets that a Parisian walks and the life a Parisian leads. She talks about the draw of the seasons of the city and the rhythm of working and trying to carve out an existence there.

This style of writing brings far more life to the landscape than just descriptions of architecture and the names of streets or guidebook trivia on districts.

An orange tabby cat curls against a bright blue book, her eyes barely open. The book is Overhead in a Balloon by Mavis Gallant.

Not for Rusalka

It took Bandersnatch a few times to warm up to the lysine chews, but Rusalka? She’s been following my lovely spouse around the house trying to get one for herself after she was allowed to try a tiny piece of one.

In a way, it works. Rusalka is the cat that is most likely to catch Bandersnatch’s cold. An immunity boost for her wouldn’t exactly be remiss.