Green Water, Green Sky

An elegant, melancholic novella

about memory, family and the meaning of home.

This is the tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, a glamorous American divorcée, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter lead an itinerant existence, with Venice, Cannes and Paris as their backdrop. When Flor attempts to flee this untidy life and the oppressive rule of her eccentric mother, she instead succumbs to a gradual decline into a breakdown.

Green Water, Green Sky was Mavis Gallant's debut novel and is a quietly dazzling example of her masterful shifts in narrative perspective and her visceral exploration of displacement and exile.