Reading Groups

In Short: Mavis Gallant's "Scarves, Beads, Sandals" with Mike Levine

$45

1 Session

In stock

Tuesday, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT February 17, 2026

The Center for Fiction

Registration includes a complimentary drink from our Café & Bar.

For much of Mavis Gallant’s life, critics saddled her with an unenviable description: “a writer’s writer” (low sales, inadequate recognition). As her work has steadily returned to print, she has attained a loftier status, mostly thanks to her short stories, of which she is rightfully considered a master.

As Michael Ondaatje writes, Gallant’s primary subject is “the comic opera of character.” She is especially attuned to the difficulty of knowing others or ourselves. “Scarves, Beads, Sandals” is about Mathilde and her new (Alain) and former (Theo) husbands. The story showcases Gallant’s gifts for structural ingenuity and for framing the moments in which what her characters do not do or do not say determines their fate. In addition, Gallant captures the way that objects hold a life inside them—the mute presence of the past, and sometimes a deeply uncomfortable inconvenience.

What to read in advance: Please read “Scarves, Beads, Sandals” by Mavis Gallant. A copy of the story will be emailed upon registration.

What to expect from this reading group: Participants will be encouraged to form and share their own interpretations of the story. The instructor will facilitate the discussion with questions and observations and direct attention to especially rich passages.

Led by

Mike Levine

Mike Levine

Mike Levine is an independent editor. He was previously an acquisitions editor at Northwestern University Press. Among the authors he published were Jen Beagin (Whiting Award winner), A. E. Stallings (National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, finalist), and Stephen Karam (Pulitzer Prize in Drama, finalist). He has also been a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation. Since 2000, he has taught literature and film seminars in several continuing education programs. He has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in English from Rice University.

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